Critical Knowledge Forum: Can We Reimagine FAIR for Building Communities in Open Science?
Monday, October 25, 10:00 am - 11:00 am (ET)
Join community builder, open science educator/facilitator Malvika Sharan, PhD to discuss inclusive approaches in open science communities.
Different stakeholders in research contribute to open science communities with a shared mission of making scientific knowledge freely available for public access. However, most of these communities operate independently of other initiatives, either lacking the capacity to build meaningful collaboration or competing for limited resources. This often results in scientific outputs that most users can find, but not access, build upon or reuse in their local contexts. In this talk, we invite you to reimagine if FAIR1 guiding principles can be applied for building and supporting open science communities. Can this practice be extended for cross-community collaboration, knowledge exchange and sharing resources?
Dr. Malvika Sharan will discuss how intentional connections between community-led efforts benefit the larger open science ecosystem by enabling sustainable development, maintenance and reuse of community resources. Bringing examples from their work in The Turing Way, Open Life Science (OLS) and other initiatives, Dr. Sharan will further highlight the irreplaceable importance of ‘people in open infrastructure’ — those who facilitate FAIRness through inclusive approaches in open science communities.
1FAIR principles provide guidelines to improve the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets.
Decentering Whiteness in Academic Knowledge Production
Tuesday, October 26, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm (ET)
About the speaker: Leslie Chan is Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the director of the Knowledge Equity Lab.
This talk will highlight some key concerns with the growing "platformitization" of academic knowledge infrastructures controlled by a small number of multinational publishers. These oligarch publishers hold enormous power not only over how and where researchers publish, but also over the governance of university as public institution. Recent debates on open access have tended to focus on the visible problems with access (namely paywalls and licensing barriers), but insufficient attention have been given to the hidden and invisible power imbalance and asymmetry between the infrastructure providers and the knowledge producers. I argue that much of these invisible and hidden elements that govern the current knowledge production system are deeply rooted in colonial practices and on Whiteness. This is why, despite the growing acceptance of Open Access, racial and other forms of inequities in scholarly production continues to widen. I will provide support to my arguments with case studies, and point to means for collective action for decentering Whiteness in knowledge production.
So, You Hit a Paywall: Introducing Undergraduates to Information Privilege
Wednesday, October 27, 2021, 12:00 pm - 12:45 pm (ET)
A student who encounters a paywall often isn't aware of the complex information environment that has shaped their frustration. To help students better navigate and contextualize their information world, Cara Evanson and Meggie Lasher from Davidson College worked with four classes during spring semester 2020 to facilitate student learning of information privilege concepts. Join us as they share their lesson materials and survey data, and participate in the discussion about developing a faculty outreach plan and incorporating social justice issues into library instruction.
Acknowledging everyone's labor in science: the Heliocentric model of Open Science
Wednesday, October 27, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm (ET)
About the speaker: Luna Muñoz Centifanti has over 20 years’ experience in leading in both research and professional service within the university sector.
Currently, the academic paper is prioritized as the cornerstone of the scientific method. We present the Heliocentric model of Open Science where the paper is placed in its rightful position as one step in the process - dissemination - while acknowledging all the other scientific labor in knowledge production. We also talk about how the current system marginalizes many groups who participate fully in science but whose labor is never acknowledged. Finally, we discuss psychological barriers to this paradigm shift and counterpoints based on health and wellbeing.
In the Library with the Lead Pipe: Evolving a Practice of Publishing Equity
Thursday, October 28, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm (ET)
About the speakers: Ian Beilin, Jaena Rae Cabrera and Ryan Randall are Editors of In the Library with the Lead Pipe journal
In the Library with the Lead Pipe is an open access, open peer-reviewed journal dedicated to equity in all of its practices. Drawing on their experience as members of the editorial board of In the Library with the Lead Pipe, Ian Beilin, Jaena Rae Cabrera, and Ryan Randall will share some background on Lead Pipe’s history and particular approach to library scholarship. They will also discuss Lead Pipe’s open peer review process, evaluation of submissions, and its evolving practice of integrating positionality statements from prospective authors.
Critical Knowledge Forum: A Modern Take on Research Communication with Jennifer Gibson
Friday, October 29, 10:00 am - 11:00 am (ET)
About the speaker: Jennifer is Executive Director of Dryad, the open-access repository and curation service for international research data.
What if we could start all over again? Knowing what we know now, about the needs for research and the opportunities to improve the human condition, about the power of the Internet, and about the importance of the global village, what would we want publishing to look like? How would we use instant online sharing? How would we tap into experts in other corners of the globe? How would we design a system that truly accelerates discovery for the benefit of everyone?
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