South Africa’s higher education minister, Buti Manamela, has signed a new communique proposing significant changes to how universities claim publication subsidies. According to Daily Maverick, the document, issued on 9 October, states that the gaming of the Publication Output Subsidy has reached levels requiring departmental intervention. The proposed rules, set to take effect in May 2027, aim to curb what the department describes as perverse incentives in academic research funding.

The communique outlines several specific mechanisms to tighten subsidy claims. Universities would face caps on the number of publications a single author can claim, with variations based on disciplinary differences. Subsidies would be refused for articles published in predatory, hijacked, or delisted journals, as well as for books from vanity presses. The rules also restrict claims for student publications and require visiting fellows to co-author and declare all affiliations to qualify for funding. Repeat offenders and those guilty of salami-slicing or gift authorship would face blacklisting.

Daily Maverick reports that these changes respond to data from Johann Mouton’s CREST team, which tracks subsidy gaming. The report highlights extreme cases, such as one academic submitting 125 journal articles and 30 conference presentations in a single year. As the report notes, "That is an article every three days." Another author claimed seven books in a single year, a pace the article argues is difficult to sustain even with artificial intelligence assistance. These figures illustrate how the subsidy system has incentivized quantity over quality, with a single-authored article earning its university approximately R130,000.

The financial stakes are substantial. Daily Maverick notes that the research output grant for the 2025/26 financial year is R5.8-billion. Subsidy units have risen from 7,230 in 2005 to 25,982 in 2024, driven by universities treating publication as a key performance indicator. At Fort Hare, an independent assessor found that more than R86-million was paid into academics’ personal accounts between 2014 and 2019. Mouton says the problem is concentrated in a handful of the 26 public universities, while others, like Wits, have welcomed the measures. Consultations with research managers are scheduled before the end of the year.