Résumés
Abstract
A few companies with dominance over academic publishing have been able to capture and use surplus value created through the publishing lifecycle. This extraction—of academic labour, of data, of information—is reinvested into their proprietary data analytics products. This is both literally, as the data collected by the publishing side can be incorporated into data analytics algorithms, and financially, as the profit margins of these academic publishing arms are astonishingly high. Crucially, these profits have been used to expand these companies’ portfolios of extractive data services across industries as academic publishers transition from information vendors to technology-driven data brokers. By providing their labour directly (as editors, reviewers, etc.) or indirectly (as authors) to these companies, scholars are complicit in data collection and analysis used for everything from advertising to law enforcement. This data is sold back to universities who use it to evaluate and surveil the publishing practices of their employees, using proprietary metrics and methods that do not align with principles of academic freedom.
This paper provides an overview of this landscape, concluding with implications and recommendations for the scholars and librarians ensnared in it. It also includes a mini-zine we plan to distribute to help contextualize academics’ roles in the citation economy and the ethical implications for their work.
Keywords:
- citation economy,
- data analytics,
- scholarly publishing,
- surveillance
Résumé
Quelques entreprises qui dominent l'édition académique ont été en mesure de capturer et d'utiliser la plus-value créée tout au long du cycle de vie de l'édition. Cette extraction — de travail académique, de données, d'informations — est réinvestie dans leurs produits brevetés d'analyse de données. C'est à la fois littéralement, car les données collectées par l'édition peuvent être incorporées dans des algorithmes d'analyse de données, et financièrement, car les marges bénéficiaires de ces branches d'édition académique sont étonnamment élevées. De manière cruciale, ces bénéfices ont été utilisés pour élargir les portefeuilles de services de données extractives de ces sociétés dans tous les secteurs, à mesure que les éditeurs académiques passent de vendeurs d'informations aux courtiers en données axés sur la technologie. En fournissant leur travail directement (en tant que rédactrices.teurs, réviseur.e.s, etc.) ou indirectement (en tant qu'auteur.e.s) à ces entreprises, les chercheuses.eurs sont complices de la collecte et de l'analyse de données utilisées pour tout et par tous, des agences publicitaires aux forces de l'ordre. Ces données sont revendues aux universités qui les utilisent pour évaluer et surveiller les pratiques de publication de leurs employé.e.s, en utilisant des mesures et des méthodes brevetés qui ne correspondent pas aux principes de la liberté académique.
Cet article donne un aperçu de ce paysage, concluant par des implications et des recommandations pour les universitaires et les bibliothécaires qui y sont piégé.e.s. Il comprend également un mini-zine que nous prévoyons distribuer pour aider à contextualiser les rôles des universitaires dans l'économie de la citation et les implications éthiques de leur travail.
Mots-clés :
- analyse de données,
- économie des citations,
- édition savante,
- surveillance
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Parties annexes
Biographical notes
Danielle Colbert-Lewis (she/her) is the Assistant Director of Library Services at North Carolina Central University's (NCCU) James E. Shepard Memorial Library. Her librarian expertise spans various areas, including reference services, information literacy, legal resources, First-Year Experience instruction, government documents, institutional repositories, scholarly communications, open educational resources, mentoring, and library programming. Additionally, as a member of the Library Freedom Project, she actively educates faculty, staff, and students on the critical importance of privacy.
lawrence maminta (they/them) is a librarian and definitely not a fugitive from North Long Beach, CA. They do reference and instruction work in community college settings while specializing in protecting users’ personally identifiable information (PII). A few years ago, lawrence conned their way into joining the Library Freedom Project and no one’s been the wiser.
Kelly McElroy (she/her) is the Student Engagement and Community Outreach Librarian and an Associate Professor at Oregon State University. Her work focuses on information literacy and outreach to undergraduates, and she also serves as a liaison librarian in the social sciences. She is a member of the Library Freedom Project and has worked on privacy outreach and training to students, faculty, and library workers.
Graeme Slaght (he/him) is the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Outreach Librarian at the University of Toronto Libraries. His work focuses on scholarly publishing literacy and outreach to undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty, and on implementing and advocating for balanced copyright policies and practices.
Mark Swartz (he/him) is the Scholarly Publishing Librarian at the Queen’s University Library in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In this role, he supports OA publishing at the university, including many OA journals, an open monograph press, and an institutional repository. Mark recently completed a 5-year secondment as a Visiting Program Officer with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) where he was engaged in a wide variety of library related policy issues, including privacy, copyright, and online harms/misinformation. Mark is a member of the Library Freedom Project.
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