OR2019 Presentation Submission
14th International Open Repositories Conference, June 10th-13th, Hamburg, Germany
Title of Proposal
Kevin Sanders, University of West London, kevin.sanders@uwl.ac.uk; Simon Bowie, SOAS, University of London, sb174@soas.ac.uk
Session Type
• Presentation
Abstract
The terms 'open' and 'openness' are widely used across the current higher education environment particularly in the areas of repository services and scholarly communications. Open-access licensing and open-source licensing are two prevalent manifestations of open culture within higher education research environments. As theoretical ideals, open-licensing models aim at openness and academic freedom. But operating as they do within the context of global neoliberalism, to what extent are these models
constructed by, sustained by, and co-opted by neoliberalism?
In this paper, we interrogate the use of open-licensing within scholarly communications and within the larger societal context of neoliberalism. Through synthesis of various sources, we will examine how open- access licensing models have been constrained by neoliberal or otherwise corporate agendas, how open access and open scholarship have been reframed within discourses of compliance, how open-source software models and software are co-opted by politico-economic forces (Barron & Preater, 2018), and how the language of 'openness' is widely misused in higher education and repository services circles to drive agendas that run counter to actually increasing openness. We will finish by suggesting ways to resist this trend and use open-licensing models to resist neoliberal agendas in open scholarship.
Conference Themes
Discovery, use and impact
Supporting open scholarship and cultural heritage
Open and sustainable
Policies, licensing and the law
Keywords
Openness under neoliberalism Open-access licensing in capitalism The politics of open-licensing
Audience
All stakeholders in scholarly communications will benefit from considering the foundational issues raised in this paper from researchers to policy makers to library systems and repository managers to readers and users of research outputs. In our current climate, all scholarly communications workers should consider the intersection of openness, capitalism, and neoliberal political structures and operations.
1
Background
Our socio-political interrogation and evaluation of the language of ‘open’ and ‘openness’ speaks to the
‘open and sustainable’ theme of Open Repositories 2019. This paper also touches on adjacent themes such as ‘policies, licensing and the law’ and ‘supporting open scholarship and cultural heritage’.
Content
This paper will cover:
An overview of existing open licensing models in Higher Education o Open-access publishing in Higher Education
o Open-source software in Higher Education
A brief overview of the neoliberal context of capitalist society focusing on the commodification of Higher Education
A critical evaluation of how open licensing is co-opted by neoliberal agendas using examples like:
o The language of ‘compliance’ and ‘mandates’ surrounding open access’ implementation in the UK
o How open-source software is co-opted by corporations and tech companies
o Performative openness and ‘openwashing’ performed by large software vendors and academic publishers
o The lack of definition of the term ‘openness’ as actually used in Higher Education contexts
Recommendations for resisting this trend and practicing an anti-capitalist praxis of openness
Conclusion
This paper acknowledges the importance of examining the socio-political realities that contextualize open- licensing initiatives in scholarly communications. Recognising the genealogies and multiple lineages of openness (Moore, 2017) can help us to better understand the tensions that exists across open praxis.
Neoliberalism’s appropriation of scholarly communication (Lawson et al., 2015) and research output management serves to curtail the radical potential of openness to challenge existing political norms. This paper argues that orienting community efforts towards openness and challenging corporate domination of openness discourse will greatly benefit discussion of the politics of open approaches.
Repository System
● Not Applicable
References
Barron, S., & Preater, A. J. (2018). Critical systems librarianship. In: K. P. Nicholson & M. Seale (Eds.) The politics of theory and the practice of critical librarianship pp. 87-113. Library Juice Press.
Lawson, S., Sanders, K., & Smith, L. (2015). Commodification of the information profession: A critique of higher education under neoliberalism. Journal of librarianship and scholarly communication, 3(1).
Moore, S. A. (2017). A genealogy of open access: negotiations between openness and access to research. Revue Française Des Sciences de l’information et de la communication, (11).
2
