Digital Object Identifier: Privatising Knowledge Governance through Infrastructuring

This chapter uses what has become arguably the most ubiquitous piece of thinking infrastructure, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), as a point of entry to explore the infrastructuring of hegemonic power in knowledge circulation. The chapter opens with a technical explanation of the DOI, followed by a brief history of the formation of the organizations that undergird the DOI. Along with the other metric devices, emerging “norms'' and narratives about the DOI further reinforce its centrality and we spend time debunking these myths. We close by exploring and making visible the relational work that the DOI performs to enable and shape the development of surveillance publishing, a dominant mode of profit and cognitive extraction in the higher education and research market.

Bibliographic information:

Okune A, Chan L. 2023 Digital object identifier: privatising knowledge circulation through infrastructuring. In Routledge handbook of academic knowledge circulation (eds Keim W et al.), pp. 278-287. London, UK: Routledge.