This single journal study provides a comprehensive overview of the history and development of the South African Computer Journal (SACJ, formerly Quaestiones Informaticae), combined with a bibliometric and altmetric analysis spanning 45 years from 1979 to 2023. Citation data were sourced from Google Scholar and Scopus, while Mendeley readership counts were used as an alternative metric indicator. A total of 768 articles were analysed to assess journal productivity, authorship patterns and collaboration trends. On average, 17 articles were published per year, with an average of 8.3 Google Scholar citations per article. Citation data reveal that 60% of articles had Google Scholar citations, while 40% remained uncited. The journal exhibits a notable shift from single authorship to multi-authorship, with co-authored articles increasing from 22% (1979 to 1989) to 70% (1990 to 2023). The results indicate a strong association between collaboration and scholarly impact, as articles with two or three authors consistently achieved higher citation counts and Mendeley readership than single-authored articles. The most productive authors and most cited papers were identified. The SACJ journal metrics were also compared with selected international journals in the Computing discipline.

This study is interested in increasing the likelihood of achieving the organisational adoption of artificial intelligence that has a positive outcome. We argue that the technological-organisational-environmental framework provides a sound theoretical lens for analysing how an organisation’s context influences the adoption and integration of artificial intelligence solutions. Furthermore, the diffusion of innovation theory is proposed to identify enablers for transforming organisations. Together with the combination of technological-organisational-environmental and diffusion of innovation, the stages of diffusion are proposed as an evaluation paradigm to evaluate the effectiveness of the enabling factors. Furthermore, the elements and objectives of artificial intelligence adoption in the context of data-driven organisations are included. From this, the research develops a comprehensive framework for studying the technical and social AI adoption elements in an organisational environment where complex symbiotic relationships prevail. This study uses generative artificial intelligence as a novel approach to exploring the framework’s usability. The evidence from our research indicates that the developed framework can advance our comprehension of what drives the success or failure of artificial intelligence adoption in organisations. Theoretically, it provides a tool for dissecting and understanding the key elements influencing this process.

Organisations need to adopt AI successfully and responsibly. AI’s technical capabilities make AI powerful. However, the implementation of AI in organisations is not limited to the technical elements and requires a more holistic approach. An AI implementation within an organisation is a sociotechnical system, with the interplay between social and technical components. Considering the sociotechnical nature of AI in organisations, the following research question arises: From a sociotechnical perspective, how can an organisation increase adoption of AI as part of its quest to become more data-driven? In light of the research question, we propose to create a sociotechnical artificial intelligence adoption framework with a target audience of both academics and practitioners. This study follows a design science research approach, constituting various iterative cycles. The study is conducted at an automotive manufacturer’s IT Hub based in South Africa and has the aim to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world organisation. To achieve this, focus groups serve as the primary research method. As the organisation at which the study took place is seen as a global leader in industrial digital transformation, the experience can help researchers and other organisations understand how an organisation can increase the adoption of AI.

This first issue of SACJ in 2023 includes three papers from researchers outside South Africa: one from our neighbours in Namibia and two from Ukraine.The first paper from Namibia by Shapopi, Limbo and Backes describes the operation and running of Namibia's first high performance computer, how this experience has developed human capacity, and how the service is supporting scientific research.The paper is published in the form of a 'Communication', rather than a research paper.Communications in SACJ are publications of ideas or experiences that are deemed by the editor-in-chief to be of interest to readers.Although contributions of this category are not peer reviewed and hence would not qualify for government subsidy in the South African context, they still follow the usual copy-editing and production editing processes and are allocated a unique persistent DOI like regular research papers.Similar to Communications, Viewpoints are publications of research-in-progress that are not peer reviewed.In this issue, we have two articles published as Viewpoints from the Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the work of Ukrainian researchers has become very challenging due to the large-scale decrease in funding for research projects.In addition, many researchers were mobilised into the ranks of the armed forces and those who are keeping research going in cities such as Kyiv have to contend with the unpredictability and destruction of ongoing rocket attacks.We are therefore happy to support these researchers in a small way by disseminating their work.Figure 1 provides a glimpse into the research lab in Kyiv of the authors who contributed to this issue.Both articles from Ukraine are related to ontologies.The first paper by Malakhov, Petrenko and Cohn describes the architectural and structural organisation of an ontology-related system for processing repositories of scientific publications.The second paper by Litvin, Palagin, Kaverinsky and Malakhov describes an approach for the automated creation of ontologies from natural language text and provides a software implementation parameterised for the Ukrainian language.We hope these articles will be of interest to researchers in South Africa

High quality road infrastructure is essential to support economic growth for any region. For South Africa’s landlocked economic hub 79% of goods are transported using roads infrastructure. Protection of the road infrastructure is implemented by means of overload control monitoring at traffic control centres (TCCs) on freight corridors. Statistics collected from TCC operations indicate that 75% to 85% of statically weighed vehicles are legally loaded, with the implication that unnecessary time was wasted for these vehicles. This paper therefore proposes an algorithm, called the intelligent weigh-in-motion (IWIM) algorithm, with the purpose to decrease static weighing of vehicles by implementing data sharing between TCCs on the freight corridor, combined with intelligent interpretation of this data. The selected algorithm was chosen after testing multiple artificial intelligence (AI) models (logistic regression, random forest tree, and artificial neural network) to achieve the best performance to decrease static weighing of vehicles while not increasing the number of overloaded vehicles allowed to proceed on the corridor. The best performing model to differentiate between overloaded and legal vehicles, random forest tree, achieved an average improvement of 65,83% in terms of vehicles to be statically weighed when compared to the current rule-based system employed at TCCs.

This conceptual article critiques digitisation of higher education and research as it relates to inclusivity and equity for indigenous students. I argue that indigenous students’ access to education is not limited to indigenisation of their learning, knowledge and research; it is more about what they learn and how they learn it through technology – information and communication technology (ICT) and online platforms. These students are excluded and do not enjoy equal educational opportunities when digitising their learning and knowledge does not relate to their cultural contexts. In addition, innovative projects and programmes which are insensitive to the dynamics of indigenous knowledge further make indigenous knowledge vulnerable to colonial practices. This article contributes insights into the vulnerability of indigenous students and institutions of higher learning being uncritical of the digitisation of their learning, knowledge, and research. The article will conscientise institutions of higher learning to digitise learning and research from a truly transformational perspective.

A new technique and its software implementation are presented to create a deeply semantically structured ontology using plain natural language text as input, without regular structure or any previous tagging and markup. The new approach is primarily aimed at highly inflectional languages, and is implemented for Ukrainian. The automatically created ontologies (in OWL) could be easily converted to other graph databases formats, such as Neo4j, and were successfully evaluated as valid ontologies using Protégé, RDFlib and Neo4j environments. An integrated approach is proposed for the development of natural language dialogue systems driven by the ontologyrelated graph database using the Cypher language for the formal queries. The original phrases are subject to a special method of semantic analysis, which determines the type of formal query to the database. The essence of the analysis is that the text of the user’s phrase goes through a series of checks. Based on their results, a set of basic templates for the formal requests are determined, as well as additional constructions that are attached to the basic template. Some of the checks may also return the notion of substitution to certain specified positions of the formal query. Formal queries can return both contexts and lists of ontology concepts. In addition to concepts, queries can also return information about specific semantic predicates that connect them, which simplifies the synthesis of natural language responses. The synthesis of answers is based on special templates, the choice of which is directly related to the corresponding template of the formal query.

This paper investigates the learning and teaching of English as a first additional Language (EFAL) using digital resources. It was a qualitative study conducted in a Grade 10 township classroom in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were collected through observation of a traditional classroom, a computer laboratory and a media room. In addition, using semi-structured interviews, an EFAL teacher, the head of department for languages and the school principal, were interviewed. The research aimed to understand whether the pedagogical digital literacy practices and the use of digital resources enhance the learning of EFAL. In South Africa, English is the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) for the majority of learners that are non-English speakers. Through the lens of computer assisted language learning (CALL) theory and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), this article argues that the integration of technology helps teachers to deliver the EFAL content in a flexible and enhanced way. The findings reveal that teachers who teach in impoverished backgrounds and in other languages need to be equipped with digital literacy skills. These skills will address the challenges of literacy currently faced by the country. In conclusion, the amalgamation of an e-education policy with the ...

Technology plays a crucial role in education and many other sectors of the economy. The national lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has made apparent the importance of technology in education, with schools that adopted technologies continuing with teaching and learning using remote means, while other schools had to wait for physical classes to resume. The benefits of technology can only be realized if technology is adopted and accepted by the users. Educators are the key players in the success or failure of technology in education. We used an interpretivist approach to explore educator perceptions on the use of technology in South African public schools. The Motivation-Opportunity-Ability model guided the development of our data collection instruments and data analysis. Purposive sampling was used to select a public high school in an underprivileged Cape Flats community. Participants were randomly selected from the school and focus group discussions and interviews were conducted. A survey was administered to triangulate qualitative data. Results show that educators are interested in using user-friendly and effective technology. This paper comes as part of a broad study on technology in education.

In most universities in Zimbabwe, the educators do not possess professional teaching qualifications. Most educators resist institutional interventions aimed at equipping them with appropriate pedagogical skills due to the rigidity of intervention programmes. The advent of mobile communication technology brought various social media platforms that enhance communication. This study was aimed at investigating the experiences of university educators during the use of WhatsApp Messenger to learn about inquiry-based pedagogy as a professional development course. Nine university educators who had no prior training in pedagogy were purposely selected from three Zimbabwean universities. Semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion were conducted to gather empirical data. The connectivism theoretical framework was used to understand the phenomenon under study. A thematic network analysis was deemed suitable for this study. The findings showed that by learning about inquiry-based pedagogy (IBP) on the WhatsApp Messenger platform, the university educators managed to transform their professional identities as well as improve their pedagogical practices. It may be concluded that WhatsApp Messenger offers a conducive platform for educators’ professional development. It is recommended that universities use WhatsApp Messenger for professional development through online communities of practice.