GAUTENG LOOKS TO TOWNSHIPS TO HELP BOOST THE ECONOMY AND CREATE JOBS FOR CITIZENS
CENTURION Pretoria, South Africa, 14 October 2020. The Gauteng Provincial Government has released the Gauteng Township Economic Development Bill for public comment — new legislation which aims to help formalise township-based enterprises and provide support for such businesses.
Among other things, the Gauteng Township Economic Development Bill promotes buying goods and services from township-based businesses, and calls for the establishment of a fund to support economic development in Gauteng townships.
It also designates business activities reserved for citizens and those with permanent residency, and aims to regulate township-based enterprises in certain sectors.
The focus of the Bill will be on sectors that have rapid growth potential, particularly the ability to promote employment and exports.
“This new law will nullify all bylaws that inhibit, frustrate and suppress the operations of SMMEs and informal businesses in our province. This new law will create new conditions for SMMEs and township businesses to create wealth and employment as they grow and prosper,” Gauteng Premier David Makhura said in his State of the Province address on 25 February 2020.
This Bill is one of several important pieces of legislation in development that can have a significant impact on organisations and individuals in South Africa.
To ensure you stay up to date with these new laws being drafted, as well as other developments that may impact your or your stakeholders’ operations, Sabinet offers a South African Government and Provincial Gazettes service called SA Gazettes.
As a SA Gazettes subscriber, you will have online access to legislation, regulations, proclamations, deceased estates, legal notices, liquor notices, liquidations, road carrier permits, and more. You can subscribe to either the Government or Provincial Gazettes, or for both.
STAY UP TO DATE WITH SA GAZETTES
To remain up to date with this legislation, and legislation like it, Sabinet’s SA Gazettes offers an easily-accessible online collection of gazetted information.
In addition to providing daily updates as new Gazettes become available, the SA Gazettes collection includes Government and Provincial Gazettes since 1994.
Subscribers can search for information published in Government Gazettes either on notice level, or by obtaining the complete Gazette. The Provincial Gazettes includes all nine provinces. Subscribers can search for Gazettes from each individual province, or through all provinces at the same time.
SA Gazettes has the following benefits:
- Immediate access to Gazette information, saving storage space and cost
- Easy printing, download and e-mail
- Easy search functionality
- Daily and weekly e-mail alerts, with links to the full-text
Sabinet Judgments — a well-rounded view of reported and unreported judgments - supplemented by an advanced system to enable users to timeously and cost effectively find the information they require.
CENTURION Pretoria, South Africa, 18 November 2020. Sabinet, one of the most respected thinkers at the intersection of law and technology, is proud to announce a new service - Sabinet Judgments.
This is an exciting addition to Sabinet’s legal content portfolio – providing access to a broader spectrum of legal information. Sabinet’s overarching commitment to consistently offer the quickest, easiest route to credible legal information sources was a big driver behind the development of its latest offering: Sabinet Judgments.
A database of unreported and reported judgments from all courts, with optimal discovery and ease of access to the required judgments, Sabinet Judgments further allows you to discover related items to the judgments that include, but not limited to, legislation, articles and related cases.
By leveraging content, technology and service; Sabinet Judgmentsis not only quick and easy to use, it’s also incredibly robust when it comes to searchability - showcasing important new information, updates, and additions through our dedicated “What’s New” section.
Couple all of this with the ‘always up-to-date’ approach Sabinet takes, and users will find themselves accessing a tool that’s capable of keeping them ‘in the know’.
Strong footing for the future
At Sabinet, we pride ourselves on the fact that we’re well equipped. We have the tools necessary to empower our users to work smarter and faster.
We consider technological evolution as an enabler, and by leveraging these new developments as and when they occur, we’re improving not only the way we work but also the way our users work.
“To preserve the inherent value of Sabinet’s reputation and integrity and its perceived credibility among its stakeholders we ensure end-to-end product development of new solutions that are innovative and inclusive to the communities in which we operate, and we are continually looking for enhancements to products to meet changing customer needs,” Sanet Vos, Head of Product.
For more information on Sabinet Judgments, click here.
Powered-up publishing with PowerReview
CENTURION Pretoria, South Africa, 8 October 2020. Due to the wide-ranging and far-reaching implications of scientific findings and discoveries, it’s important that some kind of quality control exists to ensure, prior to publication, that the science they contain is sound. That’s where ‘peer review’ comes in.
Peer review lies at the very heart of research and acts as a means of validating scientific research while also creating trust and verifying the integrity of research materials.
Ultimately, peer reviewing involves a researcher’s ‘peers’ (typically individuals with similar fields of study or competencies) evaluating the quality of the work a researcher has done, ensuring that any premises, methodologies, and conclusions reached are done so with the scientific rigour required to make them meaningful.
The process, from start to finish, can be tricky and time consuming. Submitting materials, coordinating multiple reviews, circulating submission material ,drawing up reports timeously, and seeking approval from relevant sources, can be a daunting task.
…but it doesn’t have to be.
At Sabinet, we obviously understand the importance of a well functioning peer review process. But, beyond that, we also understand the frustration that publishers face when it comes to streamlining this process and ensuring quick turnaround times.
With Sabinet’s PowerReview system, publishers can drive effective online publishing while simultaneously improving efficiency and increasing throughput along the way. With its simple, 5-step, guided process, PowerReview ensures that submission of a for-review document as well as its supporting materials is simple. Also, by providing a workflow which tracks key information during the peer review process, editors will be able to keep tabs on where a document is as well as when it might reach its next destination.
This kind of automation circumvents admin and ends up saving these editors about 25% of the time they’d typically take following a document through the peer review process.
With its customisable and adaptable workflow, various automation offerings, and widespread integration with other services already out there, PowerReview is the way forward for publishers looking to power up the way they work.
Sabinet also offers PowerReview to its users for a fixed fee in local currency per year, meaning that cost-conscious publishers no longer have to worry about the fluctuating exchange rate. On top of this, Sabinet also offers local training to users wanting to find their feet in PowerReview and, in the event of an issue, has staff resources more than happy to assist in resolving these.
To learn more about how PowerReview can power up the way you peer review, click here.
Saving costs and moving to the cloud is critical for academic libraries
CENTURION Pretoria, South Africa, 5 March 2020.Libraries today are faced with the challenges and pressures of incorporating open content into their collections. The management of these open resources can be daunting, but the benefit to library users is immense.
Access to information is a human right that empowers people and develops the communities in which they live. Open Access (OA) offers access to information critical to researchers, teachers, students and the public at large. As leading facilitators of access to information, Sabinet provides libraries with access to almost 200 OA scholarly journal titles and more than 300 subscription titles via its online platform Sabinet African Journals.
The ever-growing service saw over 30,000 OA medical journal articles downloaded in the last month alone. Interestingly, more than 50% of the site’s traffic originates from outside South Africa.
COLLABORATION AND RESOURCE SHARING
Sabinet is committed to supporting collaboration and resource sharing amongst libraries and has been a partner of OCLC, the world’s largest library co-operative for over 20 years - actively engaging in a shared mission to help libraries meet the ever-evolving needs of their users, institutions and communities.
Sabinet’s Managing Director, Rosalind Hattingh, comments, “Strategic partnerships are significant to us as we continually look for ground-breaking solutions that enable our clients to operate optimally, maximising efficiencies while minimising costs.”
INTEREST IN OPEN CONTENT CONTINUES TO GROW
With library members in more than 100 countries, OCLC utilises the power of this immense library cooperative to support open access initiatives at scale - not only bringing visibility to open content for publishers and content providers, but also helping to prioritise open collections for optimal discovery and access by libraries and their users.
Their 2019 Open Content Study revealed that globally 91% of libraries are engaged in open content activities, and 72% plan to get involved in even more.
The WorldShare platform offers integrated workflows for collection management and resource sharing combined with superior discovery and fulfilment experiences, ensuring libraries gain more efficient ways to manage open content resources, while balancing budgets and priorities.
Through WorldCat Discovery, users can limit search results to a subset known for providing open content.
Additionally, users will benefit from an integration with Unpaywall, a service that maintains a database of links to full-text articles from Open Access sources all over the world.
This gets users to the best location for the OA content they find online. More information can be found at http://oc.lc/oa.
Furthermore, Tipasa, the world’s first cloud-based interlibrary loan management system, allows libraries to manage a high volume of interlibrary loan requests for all types of materials including those which may be available as OA – thereby advancing the mission of libraries to share knowledge.
There is a growing need for collaboration amongst libraries to meet the needs of their users. Resource sharing strategies need to be redefined to enable cost savings and expand the resources available.
Saving costs and moving to the cloud is critical for academic libraries
CENTURION Pretoria, South Africa, 25 June 2020.Sabinet supports libraries and institutions across Southern Africa and Africa by helping them migrate to, and effectively use, the WorldShare ILL platform.
Budget cuts are affecting organisations across South Africa, including colleges and universities.
The recent budget speech by Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni revealed that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges, and universities, have been put on essential maintenance only.
Combined with a delay in the development of new projects, these institutions have now seen their infrastructure budgets cut down by R370 million and R500 million respectively.
- Contact Sabinet to learn more.
In the face of these limited budgets, TVET colleges and universities can ensure their libraries reach out to the largest cooperative of resource-sharing libraries in the world to supply users with the resources they need.
Connecting your library
WorldShare Interlibrary Loan connects your library to thousands of libraries whose entire collections can be viewed at a glance in WorldCat®. Together, these libraries have created a shared, global library collection for the benefit of all library users.
Share collections with libraries in your city, your region, or around the world. Look beyond your own collection and choose the libraries you want to share with based on cost, location, item format, turnaround time and delivery and payment methods, all within a single interface.
WorldShare ILL includes built-in statistical reports that you can use to identify trends to help further streamline your workflows and policies. These reports can also help you show your library’s stakeholders how ILL contributes to the greater value of your library.
Support from Sabinet
Sabinet supports libraries and institutions across Southern Africa and Africa by helping them migrate to, and effectively use, the WorldShare ILL platform.
The service integrates workflows and provides time-saving functionality that enables much quicker fulfilment of requests across the interconnected network of libraries.
Importantly, it aids in cost reductions for institutions.
What’s even more exciting is that South Africa is ranked amongst the top countries in the world for usage of the platform, sharing South Africa’s library holdings proudly with libraries worldwide.
Sabinet continually strives to provide its clients with the newest cutting-edge services, along with the cost savings that these services bring.
- Contact Sabinet to learn more.