It is generally acknowledged that researchers and institutions in the Global South suffer from knowledge isolation because of poor infrastructure and lack of access to key resources, including the current literature. The remedy is therefore capacity building and the transfer of not only knowledge, but also the institutional framework of knowledge creation from the North to the South. In this context, Open Access to the scholarly literature is seen as a means of bridging the global knowledge gap.   In this presentation, I argue that a key contributor to the continual knowledge divide and the invisibility of knowledge from the Global South is the persistence and dominance of Northern frameworks of research evaluation and quality metrics, coupled with outmoded national and international innovation policies based on exclusion and competitiveness. These narrow measures have tended to skew international research agenda and undermine locally relevant research.   A great opportunity that Open Access provides is the means to develop alternative metrics of research uptake and impact that are more inclusive of knowledge from the South, particularly those with development outcomes. In particular, it is important to re-conceptualize and re-design the metrics of research impact to reflect new scholarly practices and the diverse means of engagement enabled by OA and the new wave of social media tools. At the same time, appropriate policies need to be developed to reward open scholarship and to encourage research sharing — issues of particular importance for ending knowledge isolation. Examples of the new kinds of “invisible college” enabled by networking tools and OA will be presented, and particular attention will be paid to innovations emanating from the periphery.  

1. Remapping the Global and the
Local in Knowledge Production:
Roles of Open Access
Global participation in e-research and Leslie Chan
scholarly communication: Open access Bioline International
strategies for African institutions Centre for Critical Development Studies
University of Cape Town, Aug. 10, 2012 University of Toronto Scarborough

2. Key points
• Open Access as an enabler
• “Journal” no longer serves the needs of
networked scholarship
• From Wealth of Nations to Wealth of Networks
• Need to rethink measurements of “impact” and
values, especially for development
• Innovations are happening in the “peripheries”
but there are gatekeepers and structural
barriers
• Aligning funding and reward policies with new
value frameworks

3. The World of Journal Publishing According to Thomson’s ISI
Science Citation Index
Data from 2002
http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=205

4. http://thomsonreuters.com/

5. $$$
http://ke.thomsonreuters.com/#/index.html

10. “… at a recent editorial team meeting, we discussed a research
paper from a LMIC author. The science was well done and with a
little editing for English, the paper was potentially publishable. But
should we send it out for review? The question we were wrestling
with was whether its findings were sufficiently new to make it
worthy of page space in the journal. This is always a consideration
for all manuscripts, since competition for space is intense and a
priority is to publish interesting research that adds something new
to the field, rather than too many replications of studies already
done. So the initial response when deciding whether to send the
paper out for peer review was: Reject. We already know this, don't
we?”

11. “No journal can afford to devote all or even most
of its precious page space to studies essentially
finding again what others already found, with only
the places changing. And this may be a good place
to remind authors that we almost never publish
prevalence studies, unless they are truly the first
ever done (and sometimes not even then), since
they tend to be of interest primarily in the
countries within which they were conducted.”

12. So who decide on what is “new” and
legitimate knowledge?
And
Who have access to that knowledge?

13. “We editors seek a global status for our
journals, but we shut out the experiences and
practices of those living in poverty by our
(unconscious) neglect. One group is
advantaged, while the other is marginalised.”Richard Horton,
THE LANCET • Vol
361 • March 1,
2003

14. “Research or reviews that cover diseases unlikely
to be encountered in the western world will not
gather the citations that some editors seek.
But if this commercial environment does
seriously skew content away from what matters
to those people the journal claims to serve, as it
surely does at some journals, the culture of
medicine is distorted, even harmed.”
Richard Horton (2003)

15. “Is the scientific paper a fraud?”
“I mean the scientific paper may be a fraud because
it misrepresents the processes of thought that
accompanied or give rise to the work that is
described in the paper. That is the question and I will
say right away that my answer to it is ‘yes’. The
scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a
totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the
nature of scientific though”.
http://contanatura-
hemeroteca.weblog.com.pt/arq
Sir Peter Medawar uivo/medawar_paper_fraud.pdf
(From a BBC talk, 1964)

16. Commons-based
peer production
in the networked
economy

17. "commons-based peer production refers to any
coordinated, (chiefly) internet-based effort whereby
volunteers contribute project components, and there
exists some process to combine them to produce a
unified intellectual work. CBPP covers many different
types of intellectual output, from software to libraries of
quantitative data to human-readable documents
(manuals, books, encyclopedias, reviews, blogs,
periodicals, and more)”
Krowne, Aaron (March 1, 2005). "The FUD based encyclopedia:
Dismantling the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt aimed at Wikipedia
and other free knowledge sources". Free Software Magazine.

18. From “Big”
science to
Networked
science
Knowledge for
local problem
solving

21. Need for policy alignment
and institutional redesign
Governance of
Knowledge Commons
Rethink the values
and reward system
Social Accounting and
Expanded Values

22. Broadening the definition of
“success”, “impact”, “value” and “capital”
Business value monetary return, financial capital,
efficiency, competiveness
Scholarly value Reputation and citation; trust; symbolic
capital
Institutional value Public mission, community outreach,
intellectual capital
Social value Equity, participation, diversity, social
capital
Political value Evidence based policy, transparency,
accountability, civic capital

23. Institutional
Design
Sustainability as a set
of institutional
structures and
processes that build
and protect the
knowledge commons
(after Sumner 2005,
Mook and Sumner 2010)

24. Conclusions
• Open Access is just the substrate, but an essential
one
• Metrics are driven by values, so what do we value
in higher education?
– Equity, equality, diversity, inclusiveness in knowledge
creation and collaboration
• Remapping the local and the global and “world
class excellence”
• Seeing university “excellence” through the lens of
openness and sustainability

25. http://www.openoasis.org
http://www.bioline.org.br
http://www.openaccessmap.org
Thank You!
chan@utsc.utoronto.ca