Presentation at the Open Science panel at the launch of Steps Latina America. The talk attempts to situate the rational and objectives of the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network within the broader landscape of discourse on "openness". While recognizing the potential benefits of openness, it is important to keep in mind the existing structural inequality in global scientific knowledge production and circulation and reflect on the needs to challenge this power asymmetry as a starting point for further understanding on how open science may contribute to development challenges.
1. The Future of “Open Science”, and
how to Stop it
Leslie Chan @lesliekwchan
Centre for Critical Development Studies
University of Toronto Scarborough
OCSNet.org
@ocsdnet
3. “openness is in danger of becoming
its own enemy as it becomes an
orthodoxy difficult to question.”
Steve Song (2015)
https://manypossibilities.net/2015/01/the-future-of-
open-and-how-to-stop-it/
5. Liu and Li CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 109, No. 7, 10 Oct, 2015.
an annual rate of
22.4%, accounting
for 13.6% of the total
SCIE publications.
6. If open access is progressing so well, why are the
same old established powers flourishing more than
ever before?
Why are the dominant commercial publishers still
making record profits, and gaining increasing share
of the total scholarly outputs?
And why are they still serving as the primary
arbiter of scientific legitimacy and academic
reputation?
7. “Commercial publishers now play a role in publishing
over 60 percent of all peer–reviewed journals, owning
45 percent outright and publishing another 17 percent
on behalf of non–profit organizations.”
Raym Crow, 2006
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1396/1314
8. Fig 4. Percentage of papers published by the five major publishers, by discipline of Social Sciences and
Humanities, 1973–2013.
Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127502.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502
http://127.0.0.1:8081/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502
9.
10. At the core of “openness” is really
about the transformative power of
the Internet and how best to harness
it, by whom, and for what end.
12. Science as a public goods, to serve
humanities and to improve people’s
lives
Science as a source of raw materials
to be exploited for economic gains
13. Openness has not disrupted the
current power structure because it
has been subsumed by the dominant
market ideology
14. “…data is the new oil for the
digital age. How many other
ways could stimulate a
market worth 70 billion
euros a year, without
spending big budgets? Not
many, I'd say.”
Neelie Kroes
Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-149_en.htm
15.
16. The two ideologies lead to different
outcomes
Knowledge Commons for all
humanity
Open “oil field” for extraction
17. And they call for different forms of
governance, institutions, and
sustainability models
18. Winning Horizon 2020 with Open Science
WHY Open Science in Horizon 2020?
Open Science (OS) offers researchers tools and workflows for transparency,
reproducibility, dissemination and transfer of new knowledge. Ultimately, this
can also have an impact on in research evaluation exercises, e.g. Research
Excellence Framework (REF), set to demand greater “societal impact” in future,
rather than just research output[1]. OS can also be an effective tool for
research managers to transfer knowledge to society, and optimize the use and
re-use by unforeseen collaborators. For funders, OS offers a better return on
investment (ROI) for public funding, and underpins the EU Digital Agenda by
measurably contributing to economic growth.
http://zenodo.org/record/12247#.Vir9c6T8tl8
19.
20. Jeroen Bosman & Bianca Kramer
Utrecht University Libraryhttps://innoscholcomm.silk.co/
101 Innovations in Scholarly Communication
24. Where are the actors in all these?
How do we map the “qualities” of
openness:
inclusiveness, diversity of voices,
receptiveness, accountability, intention,
choices, and TRUST
25.
26. “Academia.edu’s financial rationale rests on
exploiting the data flows generated by the
academics who use the platform. The open
access movement is in danger of being
outflanked, if not rendered irrelevant by
centralised entities like Academia.edu who
can capture, analyse and exploit extremely
large amounts of data.”
Gary Hall (2015)
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/22/does-academia-edu-
mean-open-access-is-becoming-irrelevant/
27. But the exploitation of data by
knowledge traders is not new. What’s
new is the scale and pervasiveness.
Surveillance tools are proliferating in
the forms of metrics, “likes”,
“mentions” and algorithms.
28. Figure 1. Unequal contribution and participation in science.
Chan L, Kirsop B, Arunachalam S (2011) Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development. PLoS Med 8(3):
e1001016. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001016
http://127.0.0.1:8081/plosmedicine/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001016
29. Centre
Could Open Science change the current
power structure of global scientific
production and dissemination?
Periphery
Periphery
Could open science creates
the potential for new spaces
for collaboration and co-
creation of knowledge
30. Openness as a means to
development
What is the nature of “openness” and
its linkage to innovations for public
goods and how can this understanding
help formulate and support enabling
policies?
31. A proposition that open
models and peer-based
production, enabled by
pervasive network
technologies, non-market
based incentive structures
and alternative licensing
regimes, could result in
greater participation, access
and collaboration across
different social and
economic sectors.
32. Meanings of Openness
• Free of cost barriers
• Free of permission barriers
• Free to share and re-use
• Rights to Research, meaning the rights to
participate in knowledge production and
meaning making
• Inclusive Participation (beyond expertise)
• Equitable Collaboration
• Promote Cognitive justice
33. “The right to science envisages the
scientific and technological
endeavor as a process that every
person is entitled to participate in—
a collective and collaborative
process that can help to unite a
frequently fragmented world.”
Lea Shaver, The Right to Science and Culture. 2010 WISC. L. REV. 121 (2010)
34. Open and Collaborative Science
in Development Network
Funding:
Coordination
http://www.ocsdnet.org
@ocsdnet
35. This call for:
• Diverse empirical research on “openness” across
disciplinary boundaries
• Development of rich conceptual frameworks that
acknowledge the diversity of knowledge production,
forms of representations, and legitimation
• Understanding principles of technical and social
interoperability and the supporting institutional
structures
• Rethinking on funding support and incentive structures
• Policy Alignment between funders and development
organizations
36. Open Science as Inclusive Science
• Could OCS thinking and practices lead to a
more inclusive view of knowledge production
and legitimation?
• What kind of tools, standards, infrastructure,
institutions and policies would need to be
created or adapted to enable OCS and equal
participation of researchers from marginalized
regions?
37.
38. Open
Science
Doing Science
Openly
& Collaboratively
Open Data
Open Access
Overarching Framework:
Governance and Sustainability ?
Practice Principles Policy
Knowledge as a
Public Good
Different ways of
knowing:
Cognitive inclusion
Inclusion
Innovation
Funding
Infrastructure
Intellectual
Property
Incentive
Rights to Research
for Social Justice
Notes de l'éditeur
The talk has two
“openness is in danger of becoming its own enemy as it becomes an orthodoxy difficult to question.”
If open access is progressing so well, why are the same old established powers flourishing more than ever before? Making record profits, and gaining increasing share of the total scholarly outputs, and still serving as the primary arbiter of scientific legitimacy and academic reputation?
The number of OA publications after 2006 grew at a much faster pace, rising from 37,735 in 2006 to 189,822 in 2014 with an annual rate of 22.4%, accounting for 13.6% of the total
SCIE publications.
this trend has enormous implications on scientific research. How can research/researchers using different publishing channels be evaluated fairly?
What funding schemes should be adopted? How can various OA models be financially supported?
See also
Gagliardi, D., Cox, D. and Li, Y., In The Transformation of University Institutional and Organizational Boundaries
(eds Reale,E. and Primeri, E.), SENSE Publishers, Rotterdam, 2015, pp. 107–133.
Tools are not neutral, who make them, for what purpose?
Where are the actors and their agencies?
What is the underlying ideologies that inform this taxonomy?
What about the qualities of openness?
inclusiveness, diversity of voices, receptiveness, suspension of judgement, accountability, intention, choices, and TRUST
Where are the actors and their agencies?
What is the underlying ideology that inform this taxonomy?
What about the qualities of openness?
inclusiveness, diversity of voices, receptiveness, suspension of judgement, accountability, intention, choices, and TRUST
“Academia.edu’s financial rationale rests on exploiting the data flows generated by the academics who use the platform. The open access movement is in danger of being outflanked, if not rendered irrelevant by centralised entities like Academia.edu who can capture, analyse and exploit extremely large amounts of data.”
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/22/does-academia-edu-mean-open-access-is-becoming-irrelevant/
Gary Hall
“Academia.edu’s success in getting scholars to share suggests that, for many, the priority may not be so much making their work openly available free of charge so it can be disseminated as widely and as quickly as possible, as building their careers and reputations in an individualistic, self-promoting, self-quantifying, self-marketing fashion. Nor is this state of affairs particularly surprising, given the precarious situation in which much of the academic profession finds itself today.”
Its financial rationale rests instead on the ability of the angel-investor and venture-capital-funded professional entrepreneurs who run Academia.edu to exploit the data flows generated by the academics who use the platform as an intermediary for sharing and discovering research. In the words of CEO Richard Price:
The goal is to provide trending research data to R&D institutions that can improve the quality of their decisions by 10-20%. The kind of algorithm that R&D companies are looking for is a ‘trending papers’ algorithm, analogous to Twitter’s trending topics algorithm. A trending papers algorithm would tell an R&D company which are the most impactful papers in a given research area in the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, or any time period. Historically it’s been very difficult to get this kind of data. Scientists have printed papers out, and read them in their labs in un-trackable ways. As scientific activity is moving online, it’s becoming easier to track which papers are getting more attention from the top scientists.
There is also an opportunity to make a large economic impact. Around $1 trillion a year is spent on R&D globally: about $200 billion in the academic sector, and about $800 billion in the private sector (pharmaceutical companies, and other R&D companies).
Google, Twitter and Academia.edu free content is what for-profit technology empires are built on. In this world who gate-keeps access to (and so can extract maximum value from) content is less important, because that access is already free, than who gate-keeps (and so can extract maximum value from) the data generated around the use of that content, which is used more because access to it is free.
Accordingly, the relevant arguments here are more those over the ownership and control of the platforms, together with the ‘black-boxed’ computer programmes, software, algorithms and the associated IP that are making access to the free content possible.
They are in the business of gathering and selling intelligence
We are familiar with JIF and how it has distorted the representation of regional production of knowledge. Do we know how the new kinds of “tools and workflow” are distorting knowledge production and representations?
Will open access change the current power structure of global scientific production and dissemination?
Hierarchy of knowledge created by an artifical systerm of “excellence” – that relegates science and scholarship that do not contribute to “world or international science” as being local and therefore irrelevant – and render invisible
Deeply structural = unequal distribution of power and prestige
Research is essential for informing policy, especially policies related to development
Both IDRC and DFID UKAID are strong supporter of Open Access and Openess and the emerging notion of Open Development
Development agencies such as the World Bank, Department for International Development in the United Kingdom and UNESCO are paying close attention to the ‘openness’ agenda and are supporting a variety of initiatives and policy development in these areas. Most recently the Gates Foundation, and WHO
general hypothesis - that open models and systems enabled by the Internet and pervasive technologies (such as mobile telephony), coupled with alternative Intellectual Property Rights regimes, may result in democratizing and network effects, which can in turn lead to greater access, participation, and collaboration in a number of fields and sectors – thereby leading to improved well being for individuals and their communities
IDRC is funding research in interrogating the quality of openness and the effects on education, in science and knowledge production, government, and in social enterprise, particularly the creative industries
It is in this broad context that the OCSDNet project is supported.
The
right to science envisages the scientific and technological endeavor as
a process that every person is entitled to participate in—a collective
and collaborative process that can help to unite a frequently
fragmented world.
The OCSDNet is a newly aunched initiative funded the International Development Research Centre in Canada and the Department For International Development/UK –UKAID. The project is being jointly coordinated by iHub based in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough where I work.
The network project is supported by an international team of expert advisors and Cameron Neylon is a key advisor to the project – advisors play a key role in overseeing the overall directions of the project and in mentoring the grant receipients of the project subgrants
Out starting assumption, one that will be the subject of critical assessment, is that open approaches to knowledge production have the potential to radically increase the visibility, reproducibility, efficiency, transparency and relevance of scientific research, while expanding the opportunities for a broad range of actors to participate in the knowledge production process.This latter claim about increased and more equitable particiatpions of researchers from the global South or marginalizaed regions is indeed one of the areas of focus for the OCSDNet
.
The network is supporting 12 sub-projects with researchers from 15 countries
3 projects from Sub-Saharan Africa, 1 from the Middle East, 1 from the Caribbean, 4 from Latin America, and 3 from South, East and Central Asia
Diverse topics: citizen science, open hardware, open data, IP policy, climate change, food security, public health, indigenous knowledge, sociology of science…
What open access policy should look like in the developing world? This is likely to include open access publication; the recognition of a wider range of research outputs; repository and communication strategies that recognize this and which take account of the realities of available capacity and infrastructure. And – a challenging issue – how to change reward and recognition systems to bring them into line with the policies of governments and institutions?
Of importance is new forms of governance and sustainability framework that provide lasting arrangements for oversight, funding and inclusive participation We are currently adapting the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to help us comprehend the wide ranging sub-projects that consist of a large number of subject areas, methodology, and data being collected.