Decolonizing Open Science: Southern Interventions

ABSTRACT The expansion of university systems across the planet over the last fifty years has led to the emergence of a new policy assemblage – ‘global higher education’ that depends on the collection, curation and representation of quantitative data. In this paper I explore the use of data by higher education policy actors to sustain ‘epistemic coloniality’. Building on a rich genealogy of anticolonial, postcolonial and feminist scholarship, I show how decolonial theory can be used to critique dominant global higher education imaginaries and the data infrastructures they depend on. Tracing the history of these infrastructures, I begin with OECD’s creation of decontextualised educational ‘indicators’. I go on to track the policy impact of global university league tables owned by commercial organisations. They assemble and commensurate institutional data into rankings that become taken-for-granted ‘global’ policy knowledge. I end by exploring the policy challenge of building alternative socio-technical infrastructures, and finding new ways to value higher education.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03054985.2022.2072285?needAccess=true

Decolonial perspectives on global higher education: Disassembling data infrastructures, reassembling the field

Funding: The research for this paper was supported by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, grant AH/K001841.

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The Royal Society and the noncommercial circulation of knowledge

Abstract Open access (OA) journal publishing is presented in the literature as both an opportunity for and a threat to academics, authors and higher education systems. Institutions with information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure have enabled their academics to freely retrieve accessible content in various disciplines, which in turn increases the rate and quality of publications from these institutions. Using semi-structured interviews with Kenyan faculty, students and librarians and with Kenyan and non-Kenyan publishers, as well as secondary sources, this article examines perspectives often overlooked in this debate. The paper concludes that while OA is considered an important initiative that could enhance knowledge production and consumption in Kenya, it nevertheless presents its own challenges, which should not be overlooked. OA is not a simple solution to individual and institutional challenges or systemic epistemic injustices, which lead to poor-quality knowledge circulating via some OA platforms and have the potential to dampen the global competitiveness of knowledge produced in Kenya and other countries in the Global South.

The impact of open access on knowledge production, consumption and dissemination in Kenya’s higher education system

It is our pleasure to share some recent news from the journal regarding open access and evaluation indicators. S&TS is now listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and has an impact factor from Clarivate Analytics. As the relevance of open knowledge is more pertinent than ever, a few reflections about these developments are in order. I organise the thoughts by extending Marilyn Strathern’s (2000) question what does visibility conceal.

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What does openness conceal

Author(s): Okune, Angela; Adebowale, Sulaiman; Gray, Eve; Mumo, Angela; Oniang'o, Ruth | Abstract: In the 1970s and early 1980s, parastatal and independent indigenous publishing houses were established in capital cities across Africa, but these emerging operations and institutions were quickly undercut by structural adjustment programmes; African scholars had little alternative but to turn to organizations and publishing systems in Europe and North America. Unfortunately, contemporary scholarly publishing on the African continent remains largely dominated by Western corporate academic publishers. Even as the notion of open access has gained popularity, a growing body of scholarship indicates that the concept is in fact re‐entrenching the power of traditional academic publishers under a revised business model. This piece offers perspectives from African scholars and activists on the politics of open access, revealing different experiences of and imaginaries for open access in Africa. The piece is supplemented by data from the in‐depth discussion that informed it, which is published on an open‐source platform in an effort to invite readers to also lend their analytic perspectives and contribute towards iterative analysis and ongoing dialogue.

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Eve Gray

Papers

Conceptualizing, Financing and Infrastructuring: Perspectives on Open Access in and from Africa