Co-creating Open Infrastructure to Support Diversity and Equity

By Yasmeen Shorish and Leslie Chan

The theme for 2019’s Open Access Week, “Open for Whom,” prompts us to ask questions that have been largely ignored in the open access debates. Instead of focusing on the usual questions about business models and licensing options, we would like to draw attention to questions on scholarly infrastructure and its governance. Infrastructure comprises systems and social practices that reflect the values of its creators and, ideally, those who interact with it. Infrastructure, we contend, is never neutral but involves contest over power. Infrastructure not only determines how we access and who can access information, but whose voices count as “legitimate” scholarship.

Whose perspectives and ways of knowing are valued in the current knowledge infrastructure and whose are silenced? Whose priorities are being inscribed in scholarly communication infrastructure and how do those priorities reflect global and local considerations? Who has the power to set the agenda and governance decisions on infrastructure design, and who are subjugated by the conditions prescribed by the tools and standards embedded in current infrastructure? How do issues of gender, race, class, and other marginalized positionalities intersect with the politics of infrastructure?

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