Publishing (mal)practices and their (re)colonising effects: Double affiliations in academic publishing

Abstract

This article is dedicated to one of the less-researched flaws in the South African subsidy system (SASS), namely, the issue of doubly affiliated appointees. The authors review the case of an undisclosed organisational entity at a South African university, and analyse the role doubly affiliated appointees (specifically, extraordinary professors and research fellows) played in the research output generated over six years, that is, from 2016 to 2021. The authors couch their findings within decolonial theories and conclude the following: the recruitment of doubly affiliated appointees to boost the research output of tertiary educational centres constitutes a practice that violates the principles of SASS and contributes to the epistemic recolonisation of academy.