Asymmetry and inequality as a challenge for open access – an interview with Leslie Chan | Open Divide: Critical Studies on Open Access
ab1630's bookmarks 2018-04-08
Summary:
Asymmetry and inequality as a challenge for open access – an interview with Leslie Chan (interview by Joachim Schöpfel)
Open Divide: Critical Studies on Open Access. Editors: Ulrich Herb and Joachim Schöpfel Published: April 2018 by Litwin Book http://litwinbooks.com/open-divide.php
"How did you get involved with open access?
My interest in Open Access was preceded by a broader interest in the nature of knowledge production and circulation. This interest began when I was a PhD student in Physical Anthropology, at the University of Toronto in the late 80s. The term Open Access was not formalized at that time. I was doing research on the evolutionary history of macaque monkeys, which live in various part of Africa and Asia. Through my research, I recognized that a lot of relevant work had been done by researchers in Southern Countries, but the majority of this work was published in journals to which the University of Toronto did not subscribe. This is when I first began asking questions around how libraries decide which journals to subscribe to, and what their criteria for selection actually entails. As an example, I found one highly relevant research institution in India that had been producing important research for upwards of 90 years. But this research was essentially unheard of by the University of Toronto libraries, because it wouldn’t have met their criteria for credible research publications....
What do you think about Open Science? Just a new and ephemeral tendency? Or here to stay?
One of the drawbacks of Open Access was that it was far too focused on the journal article as the primary research output and who has access to that output. To me, an important part of Open Access should be an exploration of alternative ways for communicating research, aside from a traditional, published journal article.
In this regard, I find Open Science to be a more useful narrative. Open Science aims for the entire research process to become more open: including the production of the research question, methodologies, through to data collection, peer review, publication and dissemination. In that way, it is easier to look at who is participating in these processes of knowledge production and what kind of power they have in a given context. It allows us to be more cognizant of how power is prevalent in systems of knowledge production, and allows us to think of ways to democratize these processes - to make them more collaborative and equitable...."