Open Praxis as Social Vaccine for Knowledge Equity

The current scandalous inequity in vaccine availability around the world is a stark reminder that the benefits of science are highly unevenly distributed, as “More than 75% of all vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries” as of May 2021. So despite the many enthusiastic claims that “open” scientific practices (e.g. open sharing of preprints, publications, and data) have contributed significantly to the accelerated understanding of COVID-19 and the development of vaccines, the patents for the vaccines remain the private property of a small handful of powerful pharmaceutical companies. Openness empowers the already powerful, especially when the existing systems are already highly inequitable and founded on technocratic principles. In this talk, I like to call for a rethinking about “openness” as a set of conditions to be met, to a set of actions designed for addressing existing inequalities and injustice in our knowledge systems. I refer to Open Praxis as a framework that encompasses various scholarly and educational practices, supported by policy instruments designed to strengthen community-governed tools and infrastructure that ensure that the benefits of public investment in knowledge-making and sharing are equitably shared. I will draw examples from my own scholarly and teaching practices to illustrate how openness is necessary but insufficient for addressing the structural barriers within the current knowledge systems. I will invite the participant to imagine how “social vaccines” in the form of policy tools can contribute to the building of resilient relational infrastructure that is the foundation of equitable knowledge societies.