SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING AND THE POLITICS OF OPENNESS: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITIES
SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING AND THE POLITICS OF OPENNESS: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITIES

Summary/Abstract: This paper argues that the development of a philosophy of openness in scholarly publishing is an incomplete project. For some commentators, this incompleteness is understood as primarily a technical matter; one that will be addressed as technologies and systems improve. Others focus on legal and policy constraints. Taking the contemporary university as an example, and drawing on the work of Lyotard and Nietzsche, I concentrate instead on the politics of the knowledge production process. I discuss the culture of performativity that prevails in academic environments, and identify a new scientism at work in the assessment of research. These trends, I maintain, constitute a form of epistemological closure. I acknowledge that limits to openness are both inevitable and necessary but suggest that recent changes in the production and evaluation of knowledge warrant closer investigation and critique.

• Details
• Contents