No Publication Favelas! Latin America's Vision for Open Access

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works

Publications and Research New York City College of Technology

2021

Monica Berger CUNY New York City College of Technology

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This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Monica Berger New York City College of Technology, City University of New York, [email protected] Association of College and Research Libraries, ACRL 2021: Ascending into an Open Future

No Publication Favelas! Latin America's Vision for Open Access Talk transcript with slides and sources

SLIDE 1

Welcome to No Publication Favelas! Latin America's Vision for Open Access. I’m Monica Berger. Please join me in acknowledging and paying respect to the traditional custodians of the land we are on today, the Lenape people.

SLIDE 2 Overview

This talk will examine epistemic inequality … the marginal position of scholars in less developed countries, also known as the Global South, by looking at two distinctive and opposite responses from the South: 1) predatory publishing which stands in contrast to 2) bibliodiversity and its expression in Latin American open access. 3) A third player fills the background, casting a global shadow. Monopolistic corporate publishing monetizes open access via the article processing charge or APC and Plan S is closely aligned.

SLIDE 3 OA, not the great equalizer: history

o Open access never became the great equalizer its founders had hoped it would be o The Budapest Open Access Initiative or BOAI was initiated and funded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute whose core mission includes supporting developing countries. The term ‘open access’ was conceptualized in this context1 o Open access was created with a focus on readers, not authors2 and this disconnect persists in the South.3 This rupture represents a "colonization of information".4 o Open access is now dominated by for profit gold open access5 o Resulting in the marginalization of many authors, especially from the South.

SLIDE 4 An extreme asymmetry

This is a visualization of how scholarship in Web of Science is unbalanced geographically.6 Canagarajah describes Southern authors and related stakeholders as “on the periphery” of global scholarship. Southern knowledge is “raw” material to be exploited by Northern researchers7 resulting in a North to South transfer of knowledge. Further, the English language dominates international publishing, excluding the majority of the world’s researchers8 and non-English language journals are often excluded from Web of Science and Scopus. Also, local and indigenous knowledge is marginalized.

SLIDE 5 Neoliberalism

 Neoliberalism can be defined as the belief that free markets should govern all aspects of society.  Increasingly, internationally, institutions of higher education and their faculty compete for rankings and grant monies.  This generates a greater emphasis on publishing more as well as publishing in high impact journals from monopolistic publishers who are turning to platform capitalism, a strategy where a tech company provides end to end services in order to extract valuable user data. Platform capitalism disadvantages Southern scholars and excludes Southern journals9  Dependence on bibliometrics is ever increasing globally  Conditions for Southern scholars are difficult. Publishing is expected on top of heavy teaching loads and Southern universities may impose productivity goals while  Faculty experience insufficient resources for research and lack of funding to attend conferences  Southern scholars frequently pay APCs out of pocket  Neoliberalism has resulted in open access as a cash cow o The APC model, as it exists without restraint, is in a state of “hyperinflation,”10 for example, Nature’s $11,000 APC. o Plan S fosters this situation, increasing the gap between the elite and non elite

SLIDE 6 Declarations

In response, the scholarly community issued a series of declarations.  DORA or the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment called for reform of assessment, leading to the-->  Leiden Manifesto which begins to address bibliodiversity which was further expanded by the -->  Jussieu Call for Open Science and Bibliodiversity--> which supports diversity in open access and discusses making research accessible to lay readers.  Regional statements include Dakar and Guadalajara  Yet there is insufficient non-profit publishing in the South with the exception of Latin America. Local publishing in the South is often left to the marketplace resulting in the rise of predatory publishing.

SLIDE 7 Predatory Publishing: the intersection of neoliberalism and colonialism

Predatory publishing is the intersection of neoliberalism and colonialism and is the expression of multiple failures in scholarly publishing and its evaluation. Predatory publishers imitate corporate Northern gold open access journals. They are international in scope and publish in English in order to both satisfy Southern publishing requirements while maximizing potential APCs globally. Predatory publishing, unfortunately, also continues to be conflated with all open access.11

SLIDE 8 Ottawa Definition (2019)

I was part of an international summit that met to craft a consensus definition which is as follows: “Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.”12 The AND/OR is telling. Drawing bright lines is often difficult. The predatory versus non predatory binary is a poor model. Publisher practices are on a continuum.13 Mainstream journals and their authors can behave unethically or may be mediocre or subpar.

SLIDE 9 Predatory publishing and the South

Predatory publishing is a problem for the South, hindering  Efforts from Southern publishers to launch new journals.  Existing resource constrained or inexperienced publishers, particularly those from the South, are lumped in with those that are unethical.

 Most predatory publishers are based in the South, even if they have offices in the North, with the greatest concentration in India14 15 16  Most authors in predatory journals are also based in the South with the greatest number based in India. However, the second highest concentration is based in the United States17 and an international journalistic investigation found extensive authorship in the North.18  In many Southern countries, there are requirements to publish in English language, international journals and graduate students often are required to publish.  The lower APCs of predatory publishing are appealing to many Southern authors.19  Neocolonialism is useful in conceptualizing predatory publishing. We can define neocolonialism as a condition where colonizers continue to dominate the formerly colonized systemically. Predatory publishing is modeled on Northern corporate publishing and poorly mimics the North in its rhetorical style.

SLIDE 10 Favelas and other “not nice neighborhoods”: Beall’s legacy

 Jeffrey Beall coined the term predatory publishing. He and his blacklist, which he took down in 2017, continue to dominate the discourse on predatory publishing. He was no friend of open access and his animus towards Southern publishers is well documented.20 21 22  Beall famously described the long established, internationally respected Latin American publishing collective SciELO as a “publishing favela” or a Brazilian slum.23 This is ironic.  Anticolonial publishing, as practiced by SciELO and others, is an expression of independence and self determination. Latin America has resisted the international knowledge hegemony.

SLIDE 11 Latin American open access: bibliodiverse and anti-colonial

 The term bibliodiversidad or bibliodiversity was coined by an association of Chilean publishers in the late 1990s24 and continues to be a guiding philosophy for Latin America  Valuing what is local, a tenant of bibliodiversity, is particularly relevant to the humanities and social sciences25 but also important in science.  Indigenous knowledge is also regarded as significant  Scholarship has varied audiences in local languages including policy makers and lay readers  Bibliodiversity supports variety in open access as well as alternative metrics. In Latin America, there are bibliometrics for social measures.  Cooperation between researchers is valued and measured and organizations collaborate on the national, regional, and international levels

 Here is an overview of Latin American community infrastructure: o It was open access from the ground up because traditional journal publishing didn’t have a foothold in the region, fostering receptivity.26 o Open access is platinum, meaning no fees to authors o Publishing is predominantly government funded and scholar led. o A wide variety of specialists provide training for technical and markup languages as well as editorial best practices. o The infrastructure is far more than journal publishing and includes bibliographic databases and digital libraries

SLIDE 12 Key organizations

Here’s a quick overview of the main organizations

Perhaps best known is SciELO. Based in Brazil, SciELO is geared to science and is a multidisciplinary portal, index, and aggregator as well as provider of bibliometrics.

CLACSO is chiefly a subject repository for the social sciences and humanities. It has a strong social mission and supports open access as a Commons.

Redalyc is a network and portal for open access journals and is a partner of CLACSO and AmeliCA. They provide journal publishing and are strong in indexing as well as diverse metrics.27

AmeliCA was established in 2018 specifically in response to Plan S, seeking to strengthen existing science publishing and partnerships and it was awarded SPARC’s 2019 Innovator Award.

LA Referencia is regional network of national repositories and is a member of COAR (the Coalition of Open Access Repositories). As a harvester for various repositories, they are a regional advocate for open access with a focus on open science. As partners with Europe’s OpenAIRE and COAR, they are developing next gen repositories informed by the PubFair framework that enable repositories to connect all research outputs in one place28 seeking to create dynamic publishing that moves away from the traditional journal model.29

SLIDE 13 The Latin American response to Plan S and the threats at hand

How is Plan S a threat to Latin America and bibliodiversity? Although Plan S accommodates green open access as well as platinum open access, it privileges the privileged, Northern, large, commercial publishers and authors at well resourced institutions. Subscription and hybrid journals will be pressured to shift to the APC model. Smaller publishers may end up being absorbed by large publishers. Many authors will be left out as the gap between elites and everyone else grows. Leaders in the Latin American open access community are rightly concerned that Plan S is a threat30 and have described Plan S as colonialistic. If governments and other funders that currently support platinum open access agree to support Plan S, monies will be shifted to pay APCs. Latin American open access leaders argue that Plan S doesn’t sufficiently acknowledge open access scholarly infrastructure outside the corporate sphere and that the South should get together and create its own platforms31 which it is doing with the next gen repositories project.

SLIDE 14 Conclusions: Learning from Latin America

To conclude, learning from Latin America, • It’s important to respect and foster bibliodiversity and support platinum open access which will in turn increase knowledge equity. We can do this by • Supporting organizations32 such as Invest in Open Infrastructure and Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) • Lastly, by resisting corporate hegemony, we can restore greater balance to the system. Nodding to Harriet Ostrom, we must reclaim open access as the Commons!

SLIDE 15 THANK YOU

Thank you. My article related to this talk: Berger, Monica. “Bibliodiversity at the Centre: Decolonizing Open Access.” Development and Change 52, no. 2 (March 2021): dech.12634. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12634. I would like to also acknowledge Kathleen Shearer’s talk as critical to my current thinking on the South viz. open access. Shearer, K. (2019) ‘Open Is Not Enough! Sustainability, Inclusiveness, and Innovation in Scholarly Communication’. Presented at Northeast Institutional Repository Day, Boston University, Boston (18 June).

Sources

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