Whose Open Science? And Why Infrastructure Matters

This is the presentation slide deck for the keynote at OpenCon Cascadia, Feb. 1-2 2019

In this talk, I argue that scholarly communication and scientific knowledge production should be seen as a complex system of power that favours privileged institutions and individuals, and marginalize and even oppress those who do not conform to the norms and “standards” established by the powerful. The result is a deeply entrenched epistemological hierarchy. Openness alone cannot “transform” this complex as this interlocking system of institutions and technology are deeply rooted in past political and ideological structures. They have become invisible infrastructure and seldom questioned. To begin to disrupt this system, we need to go beyond challenging the visible barriers of the system, notably paywall and licensing issues, to question the hidden and invisible power that sustains and replicate power and privilege. To this end, we need to rethink what constitutes infrastructure, who has the power to build and govern them, what informs its design, who are subjected to its “governance”, and the consequences for the powerless. In particular, I wish to focus on infrastructure as forms of invisible power. I will provide examples to demonstrate that simply imposing “open” on closed infrastructures serve to replicate existing power inequality and epistemic injustice. Openness, when decontextualized from its historical and political roots, could become as exploitative and oppressive as the legacy system it seeks to displace.