I will retire from the Social Sciences Research & Teaching Librarian position at the University of Manitoba at the end of 2022. These blog entries are the records of my exploration of the discourse around Open Access, Open Scholarship, or Open Science. It was my six-month research leave project (July – December 2022) before my retirement. The objective was to explore the changing scholarly communication landscape at a distance away from my regular liaison librarian role – with a birds-eye view, if you will. Academic and research libraries are steadily adopting and adapting educational functions, research infrastructure support and services in response to the emerging scholarly communication landscape. I wanted to explore these incredibly complex changes with the question, “What exactly is happening around the newly emerging research landscape?” focusing on the politics and global inequity in knowledge production.
My initial objective was to explore the ideas and projects emerging around non-profit scholars-led open scholarship to reclaim the knowledge production process. I first needed to situate the alternative open-scholarship movement in the broader scholarly communication landscape and its politics. I explored the dominant Open Access/Open Science discourse and its relationship to the big commercial publishers in scholarly communication in the context of four decades of serials crisis. I spent some time drawing on the critical literature addressing systemic issues regarding prevailing neoliberalism, its influence on higher education, and its relationship to the dominant Open Science discourse. Although my original plan was to explore scholars-led Open Access projects, unfortunately, I needed more time for the exploration and barely scratched their surface. I provided a short list instead, albeit incomplete, under Resources.
Asako Yoshida, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
(December 23, 2022)
