Open Access vs academic power | Frontline

"Only the Open Access Movement can address the adverse impact of Western domination of the world of knowlege. THAT the United States and its European allies dominate the world of knowledge is unquestionable. This is reflected in indicators of academic “output”. According to the National Science Foundation of the United States, the U.S. accounted for 26 per cent of the world’s total science & engineering (S&E) articles published in 2009 and the European Union for 32 per cent. In 2010, the U.S. share in total citations of S&E articles stood at 36 per cent and the E.U.’s share was 33 per cent, whereas Japan’s and China’s remained at 6 per cent each. This domination comes from two, among other, sources. First, leadership in spending. Despite the growing importance of Asia (especially China), the U.S. remained the largest single R&D-performing country in 2009, accounting for about 31 per cent of the global total. The E.U. accounted for 23 per cent. Second, the ability to attract the world’s best talent. The foreign-born share of U.S. S&E doctorate holders in U.S. academia increased from 12 per cent in 1973 to nearly 25 per cent in 2008, and nearly half (46 per cent) of postdoctoral positions in 2008 were held by foreign-born U.S. S&E doctorate holders. A dominant share of these came from China and India. A similar trend holds in the social sciences, though exact data are not available. There are a number of collateral consequences of these trends. One is what Jean-Claude Guedon calls the 'structuring of power' in science, with the most powerful institutions and journals being based in the U.S. and Europe and having international reach. These institutions set the agenda and the standards for science. As a corollary, publishing in those journals with their high impact factor is becoming a marker of academic standing even in less developed countries of the periphery. For younger scholars, obtaining a PhD from abroad and publishing in international journals has become a prerequisite for obtaining jobs in the best universities even in developing countries. There are a number of adverse consequences that this can have. In the sciences, for example, one consequence is that the research pursued in leading institutions in developing countries tails that in the developed world. As a result, there emerges a disjunction between science and production in these countries because, while science seeks to keep pace with the developed countries, production does not, since much of the economy remains 'informal'. Or, as happens in the pharmaceuticals industry, there is a lack of correspondence between the drugs being researched and developed (under international influence over priorities) and the disease pattern that prevails in these countries."