Knowledge Infrastructure and the Role of the University · Commonplace

"As open access to research information grows and publisher business models adapt accordingly, knowledge infrastructure has become the new frontier for advocates of open science. This paper argues that the time has come for universities and other knowledge institutions to assume a larger role in mitigating the risks that arise from ongoing consolidation in research infrastructure, including the privatization of community platforms, commercial control of analytics solutions, and other market-driven trends in scientific and scholarly publishing....

The research community is rightfully celebrating more open access and open data, yet there is growing recognition in the academic community that pay-to-publish open access is not the panacea people were hoping for when it comes to affordable, sustainable scholarly and scientific publishing. Publication is, after all, only one step in a flow of research communication activities that starts with the collection and analysis of research data and ends with assessment of research impact. Open science is the movement towards open methods, data, and software, to enhance reproducibility, fairness, and distributed collaboration in science. The construct covers such diverse elements as the use of open source software, the sharing of data sets, open and transparent peer review processes, open repositories for the long-term storage and availability of both data and articles, as well as the availability of open protocols and methodologies that ensure the reproducibility and overall quality of research. How these trends can be reconciled with the economic interests of the publishing industry as it is currently organized remains to be seen, but the time is ripe for greater multi-stakeholder coordination and institutional investment in building and maintaining a diversified open infrastructure pipeline."