What do we talk about when we talk about “Open”? On Education, Science, Research, and Open Scholarship | Flavours of Open

Abstract

An excellent candidate for sloganizing is the word ‘open’. Immediately one uses it, the options polarize. To be open … is to be not closed, restricted, prejudiced or clogged; but free, candid, generous, above board, mentally flexible, future-oriented, etc. The opposite [sic] does not bear thinking about, and there can be no third alternative. ‘Open’ is yum. (Hill, 1975)

Today, and more than ever, “Open” is en vogue and yum! – a generously-applied denominator used as a modifier of existing paradigms both outside and within academia to signal something, new, improved, and better than the status quo – or is it?

With a focus on the scholarly realm, the variety of Open ‘fields’ such as Open Data, Open Access, Open Source and Open Education are usually seen as a response to the still-prevailing neoliberalism governing higher education (see e.g. Kansa, 2014; Lawson, 2019), and corresponding privatization and lock-in of knowledge in all its forms by corporate stakeholders – a response that for many promise the realization of a Knowledge Commons (Benkler, 2006; Ferrari, Scardaci, & Andreozzi, 2018; Manola et al., 2019; Ostrom, 2006; Suber, 2007).

Hence, the promise of a convergence of open practices in research and, more rarely, education, that is implicit in approaches to Open Research, Open Science, and Open Scholarship is gaining prominence in scholarly discourse. For high-level stakeholders such as the European Commission, the “movement” of Open Science is even attributed the status of a “revolution” which has gained further momentum in the last years through massive allocation of funding for and subsequent work on Open Science-related projects in the Horizon2020 funding line and beyond, with pan-European networks such as OpenAIRE, and the inception of a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) pushing the Open Science agenda further.

Similarly, national research funders such as Research England (UK), the Wellcome Trust (UK), the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, France) are moving towards an integration of Open Access and Open Science principles as a prerequisite in their lines of funding. And national governments are increasingly acknowledging the transformative nature of Open Access, Open Science and Open Education by similarly including these aspects in their agendas (see e.g. National Plan of Open Science in France).

Next to these top-down impulses, there exist a variety of grassroots movements comprising those working in academia who are lobbying towards a more systemic cultural change of the academic system towards a more inclusive, equitable and participatory understanding and practice of all academic fields of occupation, including science, research, education and scholarly communication.

As Peters and Roberts have pointed out, “the social processes and policies that foster openness [are understood] as an overriding educational and scientific value, evidenced in the growth of open source, open access, open education, and their convergences that characterize global knowledge communities” (Peters & Roberts, 2010, p. 4)

But still… while there are common denominators inherent in all of the Open movements, the sub-disciplines of Open are increasingly beginning to keep to their own echo chambers, slowly forgetting their underlying ideas, principles, and values – and all of this leads to an increasing fragmentation towards these sub-disciplines turning into “open silos” (Campbell, 2015). One major case in point might be that of the parallel, but mostly mutually ignored co-existence of Open Science and Open Education. Over the last two decades, both fields have developed into considerable global movements, but the synergetic benefits that could be achieved through an alignment of interests with respect to shared infrastructure and practices that are, in the end, addressing the same target group – the researcher/educator – are still to be tapped.

With my introductory talk at the “Open Practices in Education” research symposium, I want to extend an invitation to join me on a short journey through this fragmented Open landscape. Differentiating the variety of ways that “Open” is conceptualized in the sub-movements of Openness in academia, let us take a closer look at the histories informing each of the movements involved. Following this, we will then consider the entanglements and convergences that are existent to some extent in the larger ‘meta concepts’ of Open Science and Open Education, and their relationship to Open Scholarship. As a conclusion, we will further scrutini