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Category: scholarly communication

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 “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 “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 “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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On “Ten Hot Topics Around Scholarly Publishing,” by Jonathan Tennant et al.

On “Ten Hot Topics Around Scholarly Publishing,” by Jonathan Tennant et al.

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Jonathan Tennant, Harry Crane, Tom Crick, Jacinto Davila, Asura Enkhbayar, Johanna Havemann, Bianca Kramer, Ryan Martin, Paola Masuzzo, Andy Nobes, Curt Rice, Bárbara Rivera-López, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Susanne Sattler, Paul D. Thacker, and Marc Vanholsbeeck present and explore 10 oft-debated issues in scholarly communication, in particular around open access publishing. They suggest that there are various misconceptions and differing opinions floating around in this realm, and hope to tackle some of these issues in order to bring more clarity to the…

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On The Poethics of Scholarship, by Kaja Marczewska, Janneke Adema, Frances McDonald, and Whitney Trettien

On The Poethics of Scholarship, by Kaja Marczewska, Janneke Adema, Frances McDonald, and Whitney Trettien

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In this self-declared “open access pamphlet,” the editors (and authors)— Kaja Marczewska, Janneke Adema, Frances McDonald, and Whitney Trettien—take a critical approach to open, digital scholarship. They frame such an approach within the concept of a scholarly “poethics,” or, an ethical poetics. This conception is present throughout the three short essays that make up this pamphlet. Marczewska offers “The Horizon of the Publishable in/as Open Access: From Poethics to Praxis,” where she rails against the co-opting and corporatization of the…

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On Generous Thinking, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

On Generous Thinking, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

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In the recently published Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University, Kathleen Fitzpatrick ruminates on the current state academia, with a focus on dominant trends toward competition and individualism and weakening public support. “The university has been undermined,” she writes, “by the withdrawal of public support for its functions, but that public support has been undermined by the university’s own betrayals of the public trust” (xi). She argues that a substantial shift in academia is required in order…

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