Location
KIPJ Theatre
Session Type
Keynote Address
Start Date
30-4-2019 3:15 PM
End Date
30-4-2019 4:00 PM
Abstract
The dominant academic publishers are busy positioning themselves to monetize not only on content, but increasingly on data analytics and predictive products on research assessment and funding trends. Their growing investment and control over the entire knowledge production workflow, from article submissions, to metrics to reputation management and global rankings means that researchers and their institutions are increasingly locked in to the publishers’ “value chain”. I will discuss some of the implications of this growing form of “surveillance capitalism” in the higher education sector and what it means in terms of the autonomy of the researchers and the academy. The intent is to call attention to the need to support community-governed infrastructure and to rethink our understanding of “openness” in terms of consent and social values.
Closing Keynote: Platform Capitalism and the Governance of Knowledge Infrastructure
KIPJ Theatre
The dominant academic publishers are busy positioning themselves to monetize not only on content, but increasingly on data analytics and predictive products on research assessment and funding trends. Their growing investment and control over the entire knowledge production workflow, from article submissions, to metrics to reputation management and global rankings means that researchers and their institutions are increasingly locked in to the publishers’ “value chain”. I will discuss some of the implications of this growing form of “surveillance capitalism” in the higher education sector and what it means in terms of the autonomy of the researchers and the academy. The intent is to call attention to the need to support community-governed infrastructure and to rethink our understanding of “openness” in terms of consent and social values.
Comments
Leslie is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Leslie has been interested in the role of “openness” in the design of knowledge infrastructure, and the implications on the production and flow of knowledge and their impact on local and international development. As one of the original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, Leslie has been active in the experimentation and implementation of scholarly communication initiatives of varying scales around the world. Director of Bioline International, an international collaborative open access platform, Leslie is a long time advocate for knowledge equity and inclusive development. Leslie was the principal investigator for the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet), funded by IDRC in Canada and DFID in the UK, and the PI of the Knowledge G.A.P project.
Bioline International: http://www.bioline.org.br
OCSDNet: http://www.ocsdnet.org
Knowledge G.A.P.: http://www.knowledge.org