On this page you can download the discussion paper that was submitted for publication in the Journal for Media Linguistics. The blogstract summarises the submission in a comprehensible manner. You can comment on the discussion paper and the blogstract below this post. Please use your real name for this purpose. For detailed comments on the discussion paper please refer to the line numbering of the PDF.
Blogstract of
Open Access as Social Practice: The Political of, and Experiences with Applied Linguistics Publishing
by Dorothea Horst, Emily Farrell & Britta Schneider
In the realm of modern academia, Open Access (OA) publishing presents a compelling yet complex topic as it shapes not only the accessibility of research but also influences the social structures within academia itself. Our paper delves into these intricacies, investigating how linguists perceive and navigate the landscape of OA.
It is grounded in a research study that explored the attitudes and experiences of scholars regarding OA publishing in the field of applied linguistics. We conducted a questionnaire-based survey, yielding responses from a diverse group of 88 participants, predominantly scholars located in the Global North. There was a noticeable underrepresentation among younger scholars and researchers from the Global South, particularly highlighted by the absence of respondents from African nations.
Our findings underscore a prevailing recognition among participating researchers of the social hierarchies that OA can reinforce, particularly disadvantaging those lacking the necessary funding or familiarity with OA pathways. Despite the honourable intent of enhancing access to research, we argue that OA practices could inadvertently exacerbate existing inequalities, putting those from less privileged backgrounds at a disadvantage. This raises pivotal questions about equity in scholarly publishing and the continued evolution of OA models to foster inclusivity.
Here, we draw significantly on Jacques Rancière’s work on how a shared power space of societal norms and public knowledge is created and upheld by rendering alternative perspectives imperceptible. This distribution is questioned in moments of dissensus, i.e. when the hitherto unheard, unseen and unperceived claims radical equality. We argue that OA publishing exemplifies this dynamic by challenging traditional hierarchies in academic discourse. By making research freely accessible, OA has the potential to disrupt existing power structures within academia that determine who has the authority to produce and disseminate knowledge. However, this intention is complicated by the socioeconomic barriers that still persist, as Rancière reminds us that true equity in access must also address the conditions under which knowledge is shared and produced. Accessibility is only one aspect of a broader challenge regarding the democratization of knowledge. In positioning our study within this theoretical framework, we illuminate the complexities surrounding OA as both a practice and a discourse, emphasizing the need for a broader conversation about equity and representation in scholarly publishing.
Our paper therefore sheds light on the need for linguists to not only reflect on their own practices but also to engage with and challenge the broader political implications of OA. As we navigate this evolving terrain, it becomes imperative for scholars in applied linguistics to advocate for reformative actions that promote equitable access and representation in research publication.
The present discussion paper aims to explore some of the major problems of OA as it is practised today. Based on a small-scale empirical questionnaire study with a sample of 88 respondents, the authors present findings both on the OA practice of academics in Applied Linguistics (broadly defined) and on their attitudes towards OA and its practice. Although the authors readily admit that their sample does not allow serious statistics, they give percentages for individual items now and then. As for the coverage of relevant problems, I found it surprising that they did not discuss problems of Open Peer Review, which are interesting in their own right. Concerning their philosophical background, I am somewhat in doubt that their recourse to Rancière’s theories really provides additional elucidation of problems of OA. These are minor objections, however. Generally speaking, their findings are not altogether surprising, but they are useful to have available. Therefore, the paper is certainly worth printing. There is one misprint that should be corrected: The authors wrote “classicist” where they probably meant “classist”.
Review by: Annette Leßmöllmann
Recommendation: minor revisions
The authors investigate how academics working in the field of socially oriented fields of linguistics “report on and evaluate their experiences with Open Access (OA) publishing”. They start out from Rancière’s cultural-philosophical and media-theoretical concept of Politics of the Sensible which characterizes sensory orders as a policing process in- or excluding individuals from access to politically relevant resources. Considering OA as a resource ordering process that potentially in- or excludes researchers from publishing (e.g. for lack of financial resources in the “pay for publishing” model), the authors aim to investigate if OA reproduces inequalities, i.e. between the so-called Global North and Global South. In an empirical study using an online questionnaire to which 88 individuals responded they used hermeneutical methods to analyze the data. They find that lack of knowledge about the complexities of OA publishing, lack of standard procedures across academic and funding institutions, and lack of resources for, e.g. junior researchers or researchers working beyond academia lead to unequal access to OA publishing. Hence, the moral claim connected with OA models to democratically spread scientific resources and make them accessible to everyone is seen critically by many respondents.
The strength of this study is to investigate how researchers in the field of applied linguistics actually work with OA and how they assess its value and role in academic publishing. To give readers an opportunity to reflect on their own practices of publishing in the field of linguistics makes the paper a good fit to the journal.
However, it is not totally clear if Rancière is the one and only theoretical reference to the study, and why he was chosen, but with his theoretical approach to “access of resources” as belonging to the political realm the authors can set a relevant frame to their investigation. But access to OA is not only a political (s. 212); it is also deeply embedded in the economy of academic publishing and hence, part of power relations. Maybe frameworks from, i.e., inequality sociology or economics could be helpful to fill in that theoretical gap. In any case chapter 3 could make that economic and power embeededness clearer.
As the authors also point out that power relations form discourses – i.e., by including or excluding public voices in relevant debates , it would be helpful if the scopus of these “debates” and “discourses” would be specified more clearly (s., e.g., 394-411): Are the authors writing about voices present via OA publishing, or is this about some debates about OA in academics? I found it difficult to make that distinction, which nevertheless seems to be important, as the authors suggest themselves that OA is not only a practice of publishing, but also a discourse subject (s. 219-220).
Considering the methodology which was applied, some questions arise: The overall research question is a very open one (s. 413-417), describing only vaguely in relation to what criteria linguists were asked to report on and evaluate their experience with OA publishing. Hence, I find it difficult to retrace how the research question was operationalized in the questionnaire. This especially concerns the very relevant questions on moral attitudes (s. 548) – what is “moral” here and how exactly is this epistemic interest transferred into questions of the questionnaire?
Besides, there seems to be a bias concerning the respondence from the so-called Global North versus Global South, as the authors note (s. 493-94). As the study tries to find out if OA reproduces inequality in the global publishing practices, it might be relevant to let researchers working in the so-called Global South to get a voice for themselves and hence find methods of integrating them into the study.
Concerning the interpretation of the data, the authors draw conclusions on who answered the questionnaire and who did not (s. 534-54). I find it difficult to understand the conclusion that the response behavior reflects “privileges” and “exclusion”, as other reasons for answering and not answering the questionnaire might interfere here (general interest or non-interest in publishing etc.). It might be worth investigating with further methods if the response behavior reflects power structure, but it does not seem to me that this conclusion can be drawn from the response behavior as it is.
Some conclusions in chapter 5 I find difficult to understand. E.g. the mentioning of “particularly in the disciplines under study here” (s. 729), concerning the lack of information on OA: How can this conclusion be drawn if no comparative study has been done? Second, the assessment that “… the entire discussion may be approached as a language-related problem” I find difficult to retrace why this should be the case; maybe it should be made clearer from the beginning that OA is not only seen as a political, economical and inequality issue, but also as a linguistic one.
One finding I find particularly interesting in this paper is that OA use is quite often seen as something “democratic” i.e. fostering a public access to research for many, but at the same time the respondents do not use social media widely and don’t find it particularly necessary either. The case that OA scientific information always has to cross the attention frontier of the public, and social media is an important means to do so, seems to be neglected by quite some researchers. But this is only a remark I would find interesting to discuss.
On a more formal level, structure and language of the paper are fine, with only a few typos (265: linguistic, 918: importance).
As a concluding remark, the hypotheses and the overall argumentation in this paper don’t seem to be totally new, but the idea to apply it to the field of linguistics is original and many inferences and considerations are worth reading. I would suggest minor revisions on an argumentative level, clarifying the ambiguities mentioned above and clearly hedging the strengths, but also the possible biases of the study and open questions left for further investigation.