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Category: open access

On Living Books by Janneke Adema

On Living Books by Janneke Adema

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Janneke Adema considers the contemporary scholarly book and how it could transition from a fixed, bound object to a more fluid and evolving entity. She argues that humanities scholars should reconsider their role as authors and strive to engage with knowledge production in more open, critical, and experimental ways. Adema challenges new media scholars (such as Lev Manovich and John Bryant) and print historians (such as Elizabeth Eisenstein and Adrian Johns) for their perpetuation of the book as an unchangeable,…

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On “Postcolonial Open Access” by Florence Piron

On “Postcolonial Open Access” by Florence Piron

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Florence Piron considers the benefits and drawbacks of open access in the Global South, with specific focus on Haiti and Francophone Africa. Piron argues that open access has not, in fact, created more equitable access to knowledge as many advocates have claimed. Rather, she suggests, open access has become a neocolonial tool as it has only increased access to research from the Global North, and only for those who have access to the Internet or research databases. Piron recommends decolonizing…

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On “Epistemic Alienation in African Scholarly Communications: Open Access as a Pharmakon” by Thomas Herve Mboa Nkoudou

On “Epistemic Alienation in African Scholarly Communications: Open Access as a Pharmakon” by Thomas Herve Mboa Nkoudou

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Thomas Herve Mboa Nkoudou considers how the Open Access movement has played out on the African continent, with specific focus on sub-Saharan countries. He argues that open access is not necessarily an unfettered good in these regions, unlike the popular social good / equalizing / emancipatory qualities many open access advocates have claimed for years. Rather, Nkoudou suggests, open access has increased access to western research and heralded in profit-making strategies like Article Processing Charges that have further excluded researchers…

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On The State of Open Monographs by Sara Grimme et al.

On The State of Open Monographs by Sara Grimme et al.

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Sara Grimme, Mike Taylor, Michael A. Elliott, Cathy Holland, Peter Potter, and Charles Watkinson survey the open monograph landscape as of 2019. They argue that although there has been an increase in open access monographs produced, there are further activities that could be undertaken to improve and support the production and proliferation of such texts. Namely, the report compilers suggest that publishers improve their digital asset management practices for open monographs by ensuring all digital monographs are assigned a DOI…

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On “Liberation Through Cooperation,” by Dave S. Ghamandi

On “Liberation Through Cooperation,” by Dave S. Ghamandi

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In “Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism,” Dave S. Ghamandi argues that the current academic publishing system is thoroughly entrenched in contemporary neoliberalism. He also suggests that certain directions that the Open Access movement is taking—such as the increase of Article Processing Charges (APCs)—further a neoliberal agenda as they maintain a capital concentration with the oligopoly of corporate academic publishers. Ghamandi calls for a more radical approach to scholarly communication premised on cooperative models:…

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On Reassembling Scholarly Communications by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray

On Reassembling Scholarly Communications by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray

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Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access draws together various chapters on the current and future state of scholarly communication, especially in relation to open access and open scholarship movements. Eve and Gray have incorporated perspectives from around the globe in this collection, with an emphasis on critical approaches to open scholarship endeavours and activities. For instance, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou argues that open access can be quite detrimental in Africa, where the pressure to publish…

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On Selections from Open Praxis, Open Access, edited by Darren Chase and Dana Haugh

On Selections from Open Praxis, Open Access, edited by Darren Chase and Dana Haugh

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Open Praxis, Open Access: Digital Scholarship in Action is a 2020 collection edited by Darren Chase and Dana Haugh. Primarily, it draws together chapters that reflect librarian considerations of open scholarship. In what follows I summarize a handful of chapters from this collection. In “An Overview of the Open Access Movement in Canada,” Rosarie Coughlan and Mark Swartz do as their chapter title promises: they provide an overarching look at the state of open access in Canada. The authors suggest…

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On Knowledge Unbound by Peter Suber

On Knowledge Unbound by Peter Suber

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Knowledge Unbound: Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002-2011 is a collection of posts from Peter Suber’s newsletter, which started as the “Free Online Scholarship Newsletter” and was renamed the “SPARC Open Access Newsletter” when Suber was hired by SPARC in 2003. This lengthy collection spans over a decade of thinking and reporting on the Open Access (OA) movement. It is primarily focused on the American context, but Suber comments on happenings in Canada, Europe, and the UK as well. Issues…

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On “In Pursuit of Open Science, Open Access is Not Enough,” by Claudio Aspesi and Amy Brand

On “In Pursuit of Open Science, Open Access is Not Enough,” by Claudio Aspesi and Amy Brand

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Claudio Aspesi and Amy Brand warn the academic community about the pitfalls of an uncoordinated approach to open access in their article “In Pursuit of Open Science, Open Access is Not Enough.” The authors suggest that the current open access hype is opening the door for an increased monopoly of digitized academic services and assets by the Top 5 publishers. In particular, Aspesi and Brand highlight the increase of commercial publisher activity in the areas of data analytics, research and service…

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On “Why We Publish Where We Do: Faculty Publishing Values and Their Relationship to Review, Promotion and Tenure Expectations,” by Meredith T. Niles et al.

On “Why We Publish Where We Do: Faculty Publishing Values and Their Relationship to Review, Promotion and Tenure Expectations,” by Meredith T. Niles et al.

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In this study, Meredith T. Niles, Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, and Juan Pablo Alperin focus on the gap between what faculty express as their own publishing values and what they assume their colleagues values are. Niles et al. demonstrate that although faculty suggest their own publishing values are community-oriented (e.g. they are concerned with relevant journals, audience reach, and open access), faculty also believe their colleagues to value journal prestige and impact more. This is impactful research; as…

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