Redalyc.The Knowledge Economy and Higher Education: a System For

Innovación Educativa ISSN: 1665-2673 [email protected] Instituto Politécnico Nacional México

Marginson, Simon The knowledge economy and higher education: a system for regulating the value of knowledge Innovación Educativa, vol. 9, núm. 47, abril-junio, 2009, pp. 63-71 Instituto Politécnico Nacional Distrito Federal, México

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* a system for regulating the value of knowledge

Simon Marginson** Abstract This paper describes the global knowledge economy (the k-economy), comprised by: 1) open source knowledge flows; and 2) commercial markets in intellectual property and knowledgeintensive goods. Like all economy the global knowledge economy is a site of production. It is also social and cultural, taking the form of a one-world community Keywords mediated by the web. The k-economy has developed with extraordinary rapidity, par- ticularly the open source component; which, consistent with the economic character of Knowledge, knowledge knowledge as a public good, appears larger than the commercial intellectual property economy, internet, flows component. But how do the chaotic open source flows of knowledge, with no evident of knowledge, public tendency towards predictability let alone towards equilibrium, become reconciled with good, research, scientific a world of governments, economic markets, national and university hierarchies, and publications. institutions that routinely require stability and control in order to function? The article argues that in the k-economy, knowledge flows are vectored by a system of status production that assigns unequal values to knowledge and arranges it in ordered patterns. The new system for regulating the value of public good knowledge includes institutional league tables, research rankings, publication and citation metrics, journal hierarchies, and other comparative output measures such as outcomes of student learning. L’économie de la connaissance et l’enseignement supérieur: un système de régulation de la valeur du savoir

Résumé Cet article décrit l’économie globale de la connaissance (la « k-economy »), qui com- prend: 1) les flux de connaissances de source ouverte; et 2) les marchés de la propriété intellectuelle et des biens à forte intensité de connaissances. Comme toute économie, l’économie globale de la connaissance représente un site de production. Elle est aussi sociale et culturelle, prenant la forme d’une communauté mondiale unique fondée sur l’Internet. L’économie de la connaissance s’est développée à une vitesse extraordi- Mots-clefs naire, en particulier la composante source ouverte, qui, en raison du caractère éco- nomique de la connaissance en tant que bien public, semble occuper une place plus Connaissance, importante que la composante propriété intellectuelle commerciale. Mais comment les l’économie de la flux chaotiques de connaissances de source ouverte, qui de toute évidence ne tendent connaissance, internet, pas vers plus de prévisibilité et encore moins vers un quelconque équilibre, peuvent- flux de connaissance, ils être conciliés avec un monde fait de gouvernements, de marchés économiques, de bien public, publications hiérarchies nationals et universitaires, et d’institutions qui exige stabilité et contrôle scientifiques. pour fonctionner? Cet article soutient que dans l’économie de la connaissance, les flux de connaissances sont orchestrés par un système de production de statuts qui assi- gne des valeurs inégales au savoir et l’organise en schémas ordonnés. Le nouveau système de régulation de la valeur de la connaissance en tant que bien public inclut les tableaux de classement institutionnel, les classements de recherche, les métriques de publication et de citation, les hiérarchies au sein de la presse, et d’autres mesures comparatives de rendement, tels que les résultats d’apprentissage.

* Marginson, Simon, “The Knowledge Economy and Higher Education: Rankings and Classifications, Research Metrics and Learning Outcomes Measures as a System for Regulating the Value of Knowledge”, Higher Education Management and Policy, Vol. 21/1. doi: 10.1787/hemp-v21-art3-en ** Marginson completed his PhD in the Faculty of Education at The University of Melbourne. At Monash University Faculty of Education he was appointed to a personal professorial chair in education in 2000 and was director of the Monash Centre for Research in International Education. In 2002 he was awarded a five year Australian Professorial Fellowship for 2003-2007, funded by the Australian government on the recommendation of the Australian Research Council (ARC). In 2007 he was invested as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Council of Educational Leaders (FACEL). He has active international collaborations in North America and Mexico, UK and Europe, and East and Southeast Asia. He is an Honorary Fellow of the UK Society for Research into Higher Education, and a mem- ber of El Seminario de Educación Superior de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico City), as well as several international scholarly associations, including the Association for Studies in Higher Education in the USA. Today is a professor of higher education in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

Innovación Educativa, vol. 9 núm. 47 • abril-junio 63 La economía del conocimiento y la educación superior: un sistema para regular el valor del conocimiento

Resumen Este artículo presenta una descripción de la economía mundial del conocimiento, cons- tituida por (1) flujos de conocimiento libre y (2) mercados comerciales de propiedad intelectual y bienes basados en un alto nivel de conocimiento. Al igual que cualquier otra economía, la economía mundial del conocimiento constituye un centro de pro- ducción. También es social y cultural a un mismo tiempo, y adopta la forma de una comunidad global donde la comunicación se establece a través de Internet. La econo- mía del conocimiento se ha desarrollado con una rapidez extraordinaria, en especial el Palabras clave componente relativo al conocimiento libre que, en coherencia con el carácter econó- mico del conocimiento como un bien público, parece más amplio que el componente Conocimiento, economía comercial formado por la propiedad intelectual. Sin embargo, ¿cómo puede conciliar- del conocimiento, se ese caótico flujo de conocimiento, que no presenta ningún indicio de avanzar hacia internet, flujos de la predictibilidad, y aún menos tender hacia el equilibrio, con un mundo de gobier- conocimiento, bien nos, mercados económicos, jerarquías nacionales y universitarias, e instituciones que público, investigación, necesitan estabilidad y control para poder funcionar? Este artículo sostiene que en publicaciones científicas. la economía del conocimiento, la dirección de los flujos de conocimiento se encuentra determinada por un sistema de producción de categorías que asigna valores desiguales al conocimiento y lo organiza en modelos ordenados. El nuevo sistema de regulación del valor de ese bien público que es el conocimiento incluye clasificaciones sobre las instituciones y los niveles de investigación, indicadores que contabilizan las publicaciones y citas, división en niveles de las publicaciones científicas, además de otras eva- luaciones comparativas del rendimiento, como las de los resultados de los estudiantes en términos de aprendizaje.

Introduction research universities has taken practical, determining form and is beginning to overshadow national referen- Seven years ago in 2002 there were no world university cing in many countries. rankings. In some national systems there were league Never again will higher education return to the state tables and different comparisons of performance were of innocence prior to the web and the Jiao Tong. Power- evident in others, but little had developed at the glo- ful external drivers sustain the momentum for rankings bal level. Comparative publication and citation metrics and other comparisons of countries and institutions. This were of interest only to specialists. No one was talking article situates the sudden emergence of the global sys- about global classifications of institutions or cross-coun- tem of outcomes measures and comparisons in the evo- try comparisons of learning outcomes. Institutions were lution of the global knowledge economy (the k-economy) not globally referenced. and in the intrinsic character of knowledge itself. Things have changed quickly. The Shanghai Jiao Tong University research rankings commenced in 2003 and the The global knowledge economy Times Higher rankings in 2004 (SJTUIHE, 2008; Times Higher Education, 2008). Rankings began to draw media The global stock of knowledge is knowledge that enters the and public attention in many countries and soon affect- common worldwide circuits (global knowledge flows) and ed the strategic behaviours of university leaders, go- is subject to monetary and non-monetary exchange. It is vernments, students and employers (Hazelkorn, 2008). a mixture of : 1) tradeable knowledge-intensive products, Measures of publication and citation performance gathe- from intellectual property and commercial know-how to red weight. The effects of the OECD PISA comparisons industrial goods; and 2) free knowledge goods produced at school level triggered thinking about the possibility and exchanged on an open source basis. Together the of something similar in higher education, leading to the production, exchange and circulation of research, know- 2008 commencement of the OECD Assessment of Higher ledge and information constitute the k-economy. Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) project (OECD, The k-economy overlaps with the financial econo- 2008a, 2008b). In half a decade global referencing of my and industrial economy at many points. K-economy

64 Innovación Educativa, vol. 9 núm. 47 • abril-junio activity is partly driven by commerce, and knowledge- more widely distributed than the capacity to produce in- inflected innovation is now central to industry and eco- dustrial goods or to invest at scale. nomic competitiveness. But the k-economy is not wholly contained by economic descriptors from the older indus- Interpretations of open source knowledge trial economy. The k-economy also has a cultural dimen- sion, and is partly shaped by status competition which How might we understand open source knowledge? has always been integral to research and research uni- Paul Samuelson (1954) systematised the notion of pu- versities. Above all, to understand the k-economy it is blic goods, non-rivalrous and non-excludable economic essential to grasp the dynamism of open source know- goods that are under-produced in commercial markets. ledge which is without precedent. Goods are non-rivalrous when they can be consumed In their form as ideas and know-how and as first cre- by any number of people without being depleted, for ations of works of art – that is, as original goods the example knowledge of a mathematical theorem. Goods knowledge goods have little mass and production is eco- are non-excludable when the benefits cannot be con- logically sustainable. It requires little industrial energy, fined to individual buyers, such as law and order. Paul resting on human energy and time. Subsequently most Romer (e.g. 1990) developed endogenous growth the- such goods can be digitally copied with minimal resour- ory to explain the role of technological knowledge not ces, energy and time. Also they can be digitally repro- just as saleable intellectual property but as a non-rival, duced as standard commodities for sale, acquiring prices partly excludable good (p. S71) constituting conditions and absorbing more energy. The production of commer- of production throughout the economy. Joseph Stiglitz cial digital goods is subject to scarcity but freely created (e.g. 1999) argued that knowledge is close to a pure digital goods are not. There is no natural scarcity of free public good. Except for commercial property such as knowledge goods. They multiply again in dissemination. copyrights and patents, the natural price of knowledge The condition of freely produced and circulated know- is zero. Stiglitz also noted that a large component of ledge goods is hyper-abundance not scarcity. It is very knowledge consists of global public goods. The mathe- different from conventional industrial production. matical theorem is useful all over the world and its price The k-economy is powered by two heterogenous sour- everywhere is zero. ces of growth. The first is economic commerce, which Nonetheless, while economics has the tools to des- turns everything to use (Braudel, 1985, pp. 628-632), in- cribe individual knowledge goods, it cannot yet fully cluding knowledge. The second is free cultural creation: comprehend a relational system – if “system” it is – decentralised, creative, chaotic and unpredictable free- partly inside and partly outside the cultural industries, ly circulating knowledge goods. Here the production and publishing markets and learned academies, in which ex- dissemination of knowledge goods converges with the exchange is often open-ended and populated by a strange tension of communications and expansion of markets. public/private mixture of e-business and gift economy Manuel Castells (2000, p. 71) explains the econo-mics of and with information flows and networks tending to in- networks. The unit benefits of the network grow at an infinity. Notions of knowledge as a public good do not creasing rate because of an expanding number of connec- quite capture the scale, fertility and disorder of the open tions. Meanwhile the cost of network expansion grows in source regime. Samuelson saw public goods as pre-capi- linear terms. The cost of each addition to the network is talist: prior to the market and becoming private goods constant. The benefit/cost ratio conti-nually increases, so as technologies advanced. Open source knowledge seems the rate of network expansion also increases over time to be post-capitalist. until all potential nodes are included. Hence the extraordi- Faced with the web age, the first move of economists nary growth dynamism of open source ecology, which ex- was to model the fast expanding stock of free know- pands much faster than population or economic product; ledge goods simply as the source of commercial products. and its quasi-democratic tendency to universality. But most knowledge goods never become embodied in In some countries over 70% of households have per- commodities. Even knowledge goods in their commer- sonal computers; broadband access was at 25% in the cial form are a peculiar beast, shaped by the logic of pu- OECD countries in 2006; and blogs are mushrooming at blic goods. Knowledge goods are naturally excludable at an exponential rate (OECD, 2008c, pp. 55-62). The global only one moment, creation. The original producer holds rollout of communications further stimulates commerce. first mover advantage and this provides the only solid The grid of the network metamorphoses into a product basis for a commercial intellectual property regime. First market and a system of financial exchange. Meanwhile mover advantage diminishes and disappears once com- open systems throw up more new knowledge goods from mercial knowledge goods are placed in circulation and beyond the trading economy. Some turn into commodi- become non-excludable. Any attempt to hold down com- ties. Others posit further acts of creation, communicative modity forms at this point is artificial. Copyright is not knowledge catalysing knowledge without mediation. The just difficult to police, it is violated at every turn and technological capacity to produce and exchange know- impossible to enforce. In China the reward for acade- ledge and cultural forms is in the hands of growing num- mic publishing is not market royalties but enhanced sta- bers of school children throughout the world. It is much tus as a scholar. In India localised low cost copying, not

Innovación Educativa, vol. 9 núm. 47 • abril-junio 65 commercial markets, leads the dissemination of digi- are both more creative because of growing communica- tal goods. These approaches to knowledge goods, si- tions and more frustrated by the failure to fulfil the lar- multaneously pre-capitalist and post-capitalist, are more ger communicative potential. closely fitted to the character of knowledge and the open Are all communications, cultural creations and public source ecology than is Western intellectual property law. knowledge goods really equivalent in value? Economics Yet free knowledge goods, so hard to nail down as pro- says yes. All have no price. But goods without market perty in their own right, are increasingly crucial as the economic value may be heterogenous in other ways. Is basis of innovations and profitable new products in every money the only medium where the value of knowledge other economic sector. is regulated? No it is not. Do knowledge and information In Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society (OECD circulate freely from all quarters in a universal process of 2008d), the OECD swung the primary focus of policy on flat cultural exchange? No. Knowledge flows freely and university research from commercial intellectual proper- disjunctively, but when it passes through institutional ty to open source dissemination. A common criticism of settings and publications systems it becomes structured commercialisation is it takes at best a restricted view of and acquires new social meanings. It is channelled and the nature of innovation, and of the role of universities restricted in often one-way flows. The means of know- in innovation processes (p. 120). ledge production are concentrated in particular univer- The idea that stronger IPR [intellectual property rights] sities, cities, national systems, languages, corporations regimes for universities will strengthen commercialisa- and brands with a superior capacity in production or dis- tion of university knowledge and research results has semination that stamp their presence on the k-economy been in focus in OECD countries in recent years … coun- and pull the flows in their favour. Knowledge is shaped tries have developed national guidelines on licensing, and codified in research grant and patenting systems; re- data collection systems and strong incentive structures search training; journals, books and websites; research to promote the commercialisation of public research … centres and networks; professional organisations and [but] commercialisation requires secrecy in the inte- academic awards. These processes are mostly led from rests of appropriating the benefits of knowledge, where- the principal centres of global knowledge power, most- as universities may play a stronger role in the economy ly in the United Kingdom and the United States (Mar- by diffusing and divulging results. It should be remem- ginson, 2008a). These exercise an (always provisional) bered that IPRs raise the cost of knowledge to users, authority in relation to the open source sector, without while an important policy objective might be to lower fully controlling it. the costs of knowledge use to industry. Open science, But how do the chaotic open source flows of know- such as collaboration, informal contacts between aca- ledge, which have no evident tendency towards predic- demics and businesses, attending academic conferences tability let alone to equilibrium, become reconciled with and using scientific literature, can also be used to trans- a world of national hierarchies, economic markets and fer knowledge from the public sector to the private sec- institutions that routinely require stability and control tor… there have been very few universities worldwide in order to function? How is knowledge translated from that have successfully been able to generate revenues the open source setting into formal processes and insti- from patents and commercializing inventions, partly be- tutions so that these processes secure coherence and cause a very small proportion of research results are com- often a controlling role within the global k-economy? In mercially patentable. In addition, pursuing commercial the k-economy, knowledge flows are regulated by a sys- possibilities is only relevant for a select number of re- tem of status production that assigns unequal values to search fields, such as biomedical research and electro- parcels of knowledge and arranges them in ordered pat- nics (OECD, 2008d, pp. 102-103). terns. This system of status production has older roots Mostly commercial realisation is better left to the mar- but has rapidly emerged in more systematic form in ket. The main game in universities is the production the wake of the web and the explosion in open source and dissemination of open science. Free dissemination of knowledge. The new means of assigning status values knowledge lowers its cost and speeds innovation at the to parcels of knowledge are league tables and other cutting edge of economic competition. institutional and research rankings; publication and citation metrics; and journal hierarchies. They may expand Regulation of the value of open to other ordinal outputs such as comparative outcomes source knowledge of student learning. For a long time knowledge was structured in univer- In principle global exchange is open and the volume of sities in semi-formal procedures and conventions. Insti- traffic tends to infinity. Researcher agency is association tutional ranks and journal hierarchies operated by elite rich and initiative rich. It is time poor and this is a prin- consensus and osmosis rather than transparent and cipal constraint. Hyper-increasing communicability taxes universal metrics. In the last half decade, modernised, our creative and productive time (Murphy and Pauleen, systematic and accessible instruments have emerged pri- 2009). But that issue is blurred for we create knowledge marily from the publishing industries, from the web and goods in and via our communicative associations. We in higher education itself; domains equipped to imagine

66 Innovación Educativa, vol. 9 núm. 47 • abril-junio global relations, though often with government support. indicators also reconciled in a composite index and sin- These mechanisms appeared more or less spontaneous- gle league table. The data are informative but lack the ly and rapidly spread around the world because they ful- appeal of the Jiao Tong ranking which has simplicity and fil needs almost universally felt: to manage the formless first mover advantage. and chaotic public knowledge goods and to guide invest- At first the Times Higher ranking had nearly as great ments in innovation. an impact because it promised to measure all aspects of If the k-economy consisted solely of commercial mar- university standing, not just research. However, while kets in knowledge goods, then there would be no need the data continue to be publicised and have been taken to devise a status system for translating knowledge into in by US News and World Report, the doyen of Ameri- ordered values. Market values expressed in prices would can ranking (US News and World Report, 2008), flaws in serve the purpose. However most knowledge does not the Times Higher/QS Marketing compilation have been and cannot take the commercial form because of its pu- exposed. The peer survey has a 1% return and over- blic good character. represents the former British Empire countries. Stan- dardisation procedures alter from year to year. Sharp Instruments of value fluctuations in the ranking of individual universities do not seem performance related (Marginson, 2007). Fur- Rankings ther problems include the use of a quantitative indicator, staff numbers, as proxy for the quality of teaching; a stu- The first mechanism to secure a coherent global role dent internationalisation indicator that rewards student was university rankings. Only one world ranking is both quantity not quality; and the inclusion of research per- credible social science and broadly used: the Shanghai formance at just 20% of the index. The Jiao Tong data Jiao Tong University which is confined to research. Its have secured higher standing, especially among institu- weakness is the dependence on Nobel Prizes for 30% tions and among the users of research. of the index. The Nobel Prize is submission-based and partly reputation driven and lacks objectivity as a mea- Publication and citation metrics sure of stellar science. (Note also that the Nobel indicators reward the universities of training and current The Jiao Tong ranking has brought bibliometric data on employment but not the university where the discovery research and citations, including impact measures and was made.) However the rest of the Jiao Tong index is judgements about the centrality and quality of field-spe- defensible: the number of leading (“HiCi”) researchers cific journals, into the mainstream. The Taiwan initiative as measured in citation counts, publication in Science is one case and is more interesting as separate indica- and Nature, and publication in recognised disciplinary tors than as a single index. The field of data compilation journals; and these outputs on a per faculty basis. The involves two major publishing houses and researchers data have been extended to rankings in five broad disci- in many countries specialising in science indicators. In plinary fields. The Jiao Tong Institute has made a major 2007, Leiden University in the Netherlands announced contribution to global comparison. It has established the a new ranking system based on its own bibliometric principles of measurement of real outputs rather than indicators, using four rankings of institutions: publica- reputation, and transparent and accurate data collection, tion numbers; average academic impact measured by setting a benchmark for other measures and rankings. citations per publication; average impact measured by The integrity of the Jiao Tong ranking has hastened the citations per publication modified by normalisation for evolution of the k-economy itself. The fit between per- academic field, that is, controlled for different rates of formance, data and ranking position is strong enough for citation in disciplines; and the last measure modified countries, universities and doctoral students to use the to incorporate institutional size, the Crown Indicator relative Jiao Tong position and changes in that position (CWTS, 2007). Leiden dispensed with the Nobel indi- to guide strategic planning and investment decisions. cators, counts of leading researchers and a composite The Jiao Tong league table is often read as a world’s indicator based on arbitrary weightings. Arguably the best university list, not a research list. This is unfortu- Crown Indicator provides the best comparative data on nate but hard to stop in the absence of a credible all- research performance so far, though like all such met- round measure of performance that includes teaching rics it tends to block recognition of innovations in field and/or student learning (Dill and Soo, 2005). There are definition and new journals. also concerns about the bias of the measures in favour of English language countries, big science and medical uni- Classifications versities. Nevertheless the Jiao Tong has become broadly accepted in most countries as a means of computing the The use of institutional classifications as part of a sys- relative research capacity of universities and systems. It tem of comparison opens the way to plural comparisons is much better known than the ranking by the Higher E- in place of a single global ranking regardless of mis- ducation Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan sion. Institutions of like mission and/or activity profile (HEEACT, 2008). This provides a larger set of research are compared with each other. Research-intensive uni-

Innovación Educativa, vol. 9 núm. 47 • abril-junio 67 versities, specialist technical vocational institutions and universities are pulled by both kinds of value regulation stand-alone business schools are each grouped with their but their eggs are mostly in the second basket. Only a fellows. This enables more precise, less homogenising small portion of knowledge generates surplus revenues. comparisons and better identifies the worldwide distribu- But all knowledge can generate prestige that enhances tion of capacity in the k-economy. As yet there is no glo- the relative position of higher education institutions with- bal classification but some of the building blocks are being in the k-economy. put in place. The United States has the Carnegie classifi- Nevertheless measures of the status of knowledge are cation. China has developed national classifications, and applied to only those parts of knowledge that are codi- a classification is being developed for the 3 300 higher fied in refereed papers, monographs and other formal education institutions in the European Union and 4 000 mechanisms. A third large but misty category of know- in Europe as a whole (Bartelse and Van Vught, 2005, p. ledge remains outside the regulation of value – that part 9; Van der Wende, 2008). Classifications advance insti- of research, scholarship, ideas, and other knowledge and tutional and system transparency; facilitate crossborder information created in universities and elsewhere whose student investment and other mobility; and constitute an value remains uncodified, works neither sold in a market additional set of regulatory tools for policy makers. nor counted and ranked in a status system, and works that remain as open source knowledge. More such know- Comparative learning outcomes ledge is created all the time. It always has the potential to feed into the formal academic domain, and conditions The potential impact of comparative objective measures that domain, but much never finds its way there. Some of learning outcomes can hardly be overstated. At pre- open source knowledge feeds straight into the commer- sent, the main means of measuring comparative learning cial domain, in consulting and quick and dirty research, outcomes, likely to receive further international develop- without undergoing the processes of academic valuing ment (CHE, 2008; Usher, 2008), is surveys of students and hierarchical arrangement. or graduates. These data are limited by their subjective The research university is driven three ways by the character. The OECD AHELO project is piloting measures commercial imperative, the formal knowledge status of the generic skills of graduates, graduate competence system, and the unpredictable swirlings of open source in two disciplines (engineering and economics), gradu- knowledge. These are three heterogenous “systems” ate employment outcomes, and contextual data to assist that intersect untidily with each other and have differing data interpretation. It is envisioned that the units of com- implications for national organisation, institutional forms parison will be individual institutions rather than national and academic behaviours. systems. This exercise by no means covers the whole of the public and private goods generated in teaching and Antinomy of the k-economy learning but opens a vital new terrain for comparisons. Though the technical and policy obstacles are formida- Much of the analysis of research in universities is focused ble, there is much policy momentum in its favour. on ongoing tensions between commerce and academic values (e.g. Bok, 2003). However, as the OECD notes Drivers of the research university (2008c) the commercial portion of research, while eco- nomically significant, constitutes a relatively small part Thus research universities have emerged as key sites of total research revenues and research time in higher in the k-economy while becoming locked in by compari- education. This suggests that the more important ten- sons that reference them on a global scale and mark them sion is between open source knowledge production, and with values readily comprehended by the many investors the status hierarchy in knowledge and knowledge pro- in knowledge and only partly internal to the institutions duction that is fostered by rankings and metrics. themselves. While global comparisons matter little in the The world of authoritative science is very different United States, which dominates them and so focuses from that of open universal knowledge. Status competi- on national rather than global contestation (Marginson, tion assigns value; open source ecology does not. Status 2008a), elsewhere their significance is inescapable. (US competition is framed by absolute scarcity and zero-sum interest will quicken if the East Asian countries, especial- distribution; open source ecology is characterised by ly China, advance substantially within the top group of hyper-abundance and dissemination without limit. Sta- research universities.) tus is bounded and at the top is scarcely contestable: Thus research universities are subject to two systems elite research university groupings are almost inacces- for regulating value, operating alongside each other, sible to new entrants (Marginson, 2004). Status com- sometimes intersecting: the economic value of commer- petition implies closure. Research quality and research cial knowledge as represented by intellectual proper- priorities are ordered hierarchically and the production of ty and commercial knowledge products; and the status leading edge university education is miniaturised (limi- value of public good knowledge as determined by united student entry maintains a selective student body versity rankings, research and publication metrics, and which enhances value and attracts research capacity). probably also by learning outcomes in future. Research Open source ecology sustains openness, its borders are

68 Innovación Educativa, vol. 9 núm. 47 • abril-junio porous and flexible and it continually moves into new areas of activity in response to demand, supply and the strategic imagining of researchers and executives. The price of status goods rises proportionately with status; the price of open source knowledge goods not captured by status is zero, regardless of use value. Status rests on power, money and reproductive authority. Open source production and dissemination are sustained by the me- rits of cultural content. The OECD suggests that top-down systems for dri- Nevertheless, open source knowledge production and ving knowledge and undue focus on short-term indica- status driven knowledge come together at scale and often tors of competitive performance can inhibit open source reach a modus vivendi, side by side in the same work- potentials or weaken transfers between the open source places (often joined also by commercial knowledge). The domain and the formal research sector (OECD, 2008d, open source domain is a continued source of material for e.g. p. 124; Marginson, 2008b). The chaotic mobility of the other. Industry is more likely to draw innovations open source knowledge will always elude efforts to pin it from the formal domain but the open source domain is down and store it in glass cases. It re-emerges regard- always a continuing resource. The relation between the less. The question is whether the channels between the formal and open source domains is more antinomy than open source domain and formally recognised knowledge contradiction. But it is not unproblematic. are broad enough to enable the former to become visi- ble and break open the easy mimetic assumptions of Modifying the instruments the latter. The k-economy requires systems for managing knowledge that maximise the visibility of open There is scope to modify the instruments of compari- source, while suspending for as long as practicable the son that have so far developed; whether to highlight the moment where value is assigned and the knowledge as- interests of particular national systems, institutions, dis- sumes more practical, closed and limited forms. Despite ciplines or policy purposes; or to facilitate the effective the pressures to shorten the time between creation and workings of the k-economy as a whole. formalisation, consistent with researcher and user inter- The k-economy requires mechanisms of comparison est, the communicative environment provides tools for and ordering that are “clean” in the sense of transpa- modulation. For example the use of non-selected non- rent, grounded in sound social science and free from valued web publishing (Aguillo, 2008) prior to final codifi- contamination by particular interests (for example in- cation in academic journals enhances both transparency dividual universities should not select or interpret the and the fecund openness of the knowledge. data on themselves). It also requires mechanisms that The use of a richer, more plural and more diverse set foster universal improvement, rewarding all institutions of outcome indicators also opens greater space for cre- that improve their real performance in relative terms ativity. A single ranking system and index of the value of with a higher ranking. The k-economy, especially the knowledge might appear to offer certainty and clarity, but extraordinary potentials offered by the rapidly expand- at the cost of the diversity of knowledge and the validi- ing stock of open source knowledge, also suggests the ty of data. The weightings used in composite indexes are need for mechanisms inclusive of different types of ins- arbitrary and single numbers and one-league tables con- titution, forms of knowledge, and cultural and linguistic ceal more than they reveal. Separated measures enable traditions. As noted, the present mechanisms normalise much more comparative data; and comparisons based the English speaking high science and medicine research on limited elements or objectives are closer to data vali- university. dity. Plurality also helps to foster the potential global diver- The need to accommodate diversity suggests the sity of knowledge. The more that comparisons governed need for measures and ordering procedures that pro- by different objectives and models of higher education vide maximum room for self-determination and creativi- can emerge, the more the normalising and homogenising ty in knowledge formation. For example, are the systems effects of any one comparison are diminished; the more for assigning value to knowledge always consistent with the potential for different fitness for purpose comparisons intellectual freedoms, including the freedom to initiate is enhanced, the more stakeholders can customise the new lines of inquiry? There is the risk that organisatio- comparative data to suit their own mix of purposes. Plu- nal strategies designed to maximise high value countable rality of rankings has particular benefits for those regions research outputs, as measured by citation metrics and and institutions with academic cultures divergent from the rankings, will confine the free creativity typical of the norms of the Anglo-American science university, by pro- open source domain, driving a higher proportion of in- viding scope for comparative performance data grounded quiry down predictable intellectual pathways. Here the in their own history and context. pursuit of individual institutional interest may undermine the common interest, a problem analogous to that of Recibido abril 2009 trade protection. Aceptado junio 2009

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