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Must we decolonise #Open_Access? Perspectives from Francophone Africa

A long read featuring the recent work of Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou and Florence Piron, on how a truly open and inclusive ‘Open Access’ movement must include those at the periphery

I recently watched the recording of the fantastic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion session at OpenCon, and I was struck by the general theme of how ‘openness’ isn’t necessarily the force for equality that we perhaps think it is, and how issues of power, exploitation, and hierarchy means that it should be understood differently according to the context in which it is applied. In the session, Denisse Albornoz used the expression of ‘situated openness’ to describe how our Northern conception of openness should not be forced on anyone or any group – it needs to be understood first in individual contexts of historical injustices and post-colonial power structures.

What stood out for me most in this session, however, (because it related most to my work) was Cameroonian Thomas Mboa’s presentation, which talked about the ‘neo-colonial face of open access’. The presentation employed some very striking critical terms such as ‘cognitive injustice’ and ‘epistemic alienation’ to Open Access.

I’ve always known that the Open Access movement was far from perfect, but at least it’s moving global science publishing in the right direction, right? Can working towards free access and sharing of research really be ‘neo-colonial’ and lead to ‘alienation’ for users of research in the Global South? And if this really is the case, how can we ‘decolonise’ open access?

Thomas didn’t get much time to expand on some of the themes he presented, so I got in contact to see if he had covered these ideas elsewhere, and fortunately he has, through his participation in ‘Projet SOHA’ . This is a research-action project that’s been working on open science, empowerment and cognitive justice in French-speaking Africa and Haiti from 2015-17. He provided me with links to four publications written in French by himself and his colleagues from the project – Florence Piron (Université Laval, Quebec, Canada), Antonin Benoît Diouf (Senegal), and Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba (Cameroon), and many others.

These articles are a goldmine of provocative ideas and perspectives on Open Access from the Global South, which should challenge all of us in the English-speaking academic publishing community. Therefore, I decided to share some excerpts and extended quotes from these articles below, in amongst some general comments from my (admittedly limited) experience of working with researchers in the Global South.

The quotes are taken from the following book and articles, which I recommend reading in full (these are easily translatable using the free tool Google Translate Web, which correctly translated around 95% of the text).

Chapter 2 – ‘Les injustices cognitives en Afrique subsaharienne : réflexions sur les causes et les moyens de lutte’ – Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou (2016), in Piron, Dibounje Madiba et Regulus 2016 (below)
Justice cognitive, libre accès et savoirs locaux – Collective book edited by Florence Piron, Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba and Samuel Regulus (2016) (CC-BY) ▻https://scienceetbiencommun.pressbooks.pub/justicecognitive1
Qui sait ? Le libre accès en Afrique et en Haïti – Florence Piron (2017) (CC-BY) (Soon to be published in English in Forthcoming Open Divide. Critical Studies of Open Access (Herb & Schöpfel ed), Litwinbooks
Le libre accès vu d’Afrique francophone subsaharienne – Florence Piron, Antonin Benoît Diouf, Marie Sophie Dibounje Madiba, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou, Zoé Aubierge Ouangré, Djossè Roméo Tessy, Hamissou Rhissa Achaffert, Anderson Pierre and Zakari Lire (2017) (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Une autre science est possible. Récit d’une utopie concrète dans la Francophonie (le projet SOHA) – Revue Possibles, 2016 (CC-BY)

Piron et al’s (2017) article starts with a stinging critique of those of us in our Northern scholarly publishing community cliques, and our never-ending open access debates over technicalities:

“… there are many debates in this community, including on the place of open licenses in open access (is an article really in open access if it is not freely reusable in addition to being freely accessible?), on the legitimacy of the fees charged to authors by certain journals choosing open access, on the quality and evaluation of open access journals, on the very format of the journal as the main vehicle for the dissemination of scientific articles or on the type of documents to be included in institutional or thematic open archives (only peer-reviewed articles or any document related to scientific work?).

Viewed from Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa, these debates may seem very strange, if not incomprehensible. Above all, they appear very localized: they are debates of rich countries, of countries of the North, where basic questions such as the regular payment of a reasonable salary to academics, the existence of public funding for research, access to the web, electricity, well-stocked libraries and comfortable and safe workplaces have long been settled.” Piron et al. (2017)

… and their critique gets more and more scathing from here for the Open Access movement. OA advocates – tighten your seatbelts – you are not going to find this a comfortable ride.

“… a conception of open access that is limited to the legal and technical questions of the accessibility of science without thinking about the relationship between center and periphery can become a source of epistemic alienation and neocolonialism in the South”. Piron et al. (2017)

“Is open access the solution to the documented shortcomings of these African universities and, in doing so, a crucial means of getting scientific research off the ground? I would like to show that this is not the case, and to suggest that open access can instead become a neo-colonial tool by reinforcing the cognitive injustices that prevent African researchers from fully deploying their research capacities in the service of the community and sustainable local development of their country.” Piron (2017)

Ouch. To understand these concepts of ‘cognitive injustice’ and ‘epistemic alienation’, it helps to understand this ‘world system’ and the power relationship between the centre and the periphery. This is based on Wallerstein’s (1996) model, which Thomas featured in his OpenCon slides:

http://journalologik.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/thomas-768x432.png

“… a world-system whose market unit is the scientific publication circulating between many instances of high economic value, including universities, research centers, science policies, journals and an oligopoly of for-profit scientific publishers (Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon, 2015).” Piron et al. (2017)

“… we believe that science, far from being universal, has been historically globalized. Inspiring us, like Keim (2010) and a few others (Polanco, 1990), from Wallerstein’s (1996) theory, we consider that it constitutes a world-system whose market unit is the scientific publication. Produced mainly in the North, this merchandise obeys standards and practices that are defined by the ‘center’ of the system, namely the main commercial scientific publishers (Larivière, Haustein, & Mongeon, 2015), and their university partners are the US and British universities dominating the so-called world rankings. The semi-periphery is constituted by all the other countries of the North or emerging from the South which revolve around this center, adopting the English language in science and conforming to the model LMD (license, master, doctorate) imposed since the Bologna process to all the universities of the world with the aim of “normalizing” and standardizing the functioning of this world-system. The periphery then refers to all the countries that are excluded from this system, which produce no or very few scientific publications or whose research work is invisible, but to whom the LMD model has also been imposed (Charlier, Croché, & Ndoye 2009, Hountondji 2001)”. Piron et al. (2017)

So, the continuing bias and global focus towards the powerful ‘center’ of the world-system leads to the epistemic alienation of those on the periphery, manifesting in a ‘spiritual colonisation’:

“… this attitude that drives us to want to think about local problems with Western perspective is a colonial legacy to which many African citizens hang like a ball.” Mboa (2016).

So where does Open Access fit in with this world-system?

“… if open access is to facilitate and accelerate the access of scientists from the South to Northern science without looking into the visibility of knowledge of the South, it helps to redouble their alienation epistemic without contributing to their emancipation. Indeed, by making the work of the center of the world-system of science even more accessible, open access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies.” Piron et al. (2017)

Rethinking Northern perspectives

This should be an eye-opening analysis for those of us who assumed that access to research knowledge in the North could only be a good thing for the South. Perhaps we need to examine the arrogance behind our narrow worldview, and consider more deeply the power at the heart of such a one-way knowledge exchange. Many of us might find this difficult, as:

“The idea that open access may have the effects of neocolonialism is incomprehensible to people blind to epistemological diversity, who reduce the proclaimed universalism of Western science to the impoverished model of the standards imposed by the Web of Science model. For these people, the invisibility of a publication in their numerical reference space (located in the center of the world-system) is equivalent to its non-existence. The idea that valid and relevant knowledge can exist in another form and independently of the world-system that fascinates them is unthinkable.” Piron et al. (2017)

Having spent a little time at scholarly publishing events in the Global North, I can attest that the mindset described above is common. There are kind thoughts (and a few breadcrumbs thrown in the form of grants and fellowships) towards those on the periphery, but it is very much in the mindset of helping those from the Global South ‘catch up’. Our mindset is very much as Piron describes here:

“If one sticks to the positivist view that “science” is universal – even if its “essence” is symbolized by the American magazine Science – then indeed African science, that is to say in Africa, is late, and we need to help it develop so that it looks more and more like the North”. Piron (2017)

And whilst in the North we may have a lot of respect for different cultural perspectives, genuine reciprocal exchanges of research knowledge are rare. We are supremely confident that our highly-developed scientific publishing model deserves to be at the centre of our system. This can lead to selective blindness about the rigorousness of our science and our indexed journals, in spite of the steady drip drip drip of reports of biased peer review, data fraud and other ethical violations in ‘high-impact’ Northern journals, exposed in places like retraction watch.

North/South research collaborations are rarely equitable – southern partners often complain of being used as data-gatherers rather than intellectual equals and partners in research projects, even when the research is being carried out in their own country.

“These [Northern] partners inevitably guide the problems and the methodological and epistemological choices of African researchers towards the only model they know and value, the one born at the center of the world-system of science – without questioning whether this model is relevant to Africa and its challenges”. Piron et al (2017).

These issues of inequity in collaborative relationships and publication practices seem inextricably linked, which is not surprising when the ultimate end goal of research is publishing papers in Northern journals, rather than actually solving Southern development challenges.

“In this context, open access may appear as a neocolonial tool, as it facilitates access by Southern researchers to Northern science without ensuring reciprocity. In doing so, it redoubles the epistemic alienation of these researchers instead of contributing to the emancipation of the knowledge created in the universities of the South by releasing them from their extraversion. Indeed, by making the work produced in the center of the world-system even more accessible, free access maximizes their impact on the periphery and reinforces their use as a theoretical reference or as a normative model, to the detriment of local epistemologies, which generates situations absurd as, for example, the use of a theoretical framework related to wage labor in the Paris region to analyze the work of women in northern Mali” Piron (2017)

“The resulting consequences are, in particular, the teachers of the Southern countries who quote and read only writers from the North and impose them on their students and the libraries of our universities who do everything to subscribe to Western scholarly journals while they do not deal with our problems. (Mboa Nkoudou, 2016 )”

This is also a striking example:

“It is very sad to note that geographers in Ouagadougou are more familiar with European work on the Sahel than those at the Higher Institute of Sahel in Maroua, Cameroon.” Piron (2017)

The lack of equity in research knowledge exchange and collaboration is also caused by another one-way North to South flow: funding. Research in the South is often dependent on foreign funding. Big Northern donors and funders therefore set the standards and agendas in research, and in how the entire research funding system works. Southern partners rarely get to set the agenda, and researchers rarely get to develop the research questions that guide the research. They have to learn to jump through administrative hoops to become credible in the eyes of the Northern donor (for more information see ‘Who drives research in developing countries?‘).

Southern institutions are also compelled, via league tables such as the World Unviersity Rankings, to play the same game as institutions in the North. Institutions are ranked against each other according to criteria set in the North, one of which is citations (of course, only citations between journals in the Web of Science or Scopus, which is overwhelmingly Northern). And so to stay ‘competitive’, Southern institutions need their researchers to publish in Northern journals with Northern language and agendas.
Northern agendas and local innovation

Whilst it is tempting to think that the issues and criticism described above is mostly a problem for the social sciences and humanities, there are also real issues in the ‘hard’ sciences – perhaps not so much in their epistemological foundations – but in very practical issues of Northern research agendas. For example, Northern research, being based in Europe and the US, is overwhelmingly biased towards white people, in diversity of leadership, diversity of researchers, and most importantly in the whiteness of clinical trial subjects. This is problematic because different ethnic populations have different genetic makeups and differences due to geography, that mean they respond differently to treatments (see here, here and here). Are African and Asian researchers informed of this when they read research from so-called ‘international’ journals?

Furthermore, these Northern agendas can also mean that research focuses on drugs, equipment and treatments that are simply not suitable for developing country contexts. I was reminded of a discussion comment recently made by a Pakistani surgeon on the Northern bias of systematic reviews:

“There is a definite bias in this approach as almost all of the guidelines and systematic reviews are based on the research carried out in high income countries and the findings and the recommendations have little relevance to the patients, health care system and many a time serve no purpose to the millions of patients based in low resourced countries. e.g. I routinely used Phenol blocks for spasticity management for my patients which were abandoned two decades ago in the West. Results are great, and the patients can afford this Rs 200 phenol instead of Rs 15,000 Botox vial. But, unfortunately, I am unable to locate a single systematic review on the efficacy of phenol as all published research in the last decade was only on the use of Botox in the management of spasticity.” Farooq Rathore (HIFA mailing list, 2016).

Similarly, I’ve read research papers from the South that report on innovative approaches to medical treatments and other problems that utilise lower-cost equipment and methodologies (in fact, as is argued here, research in low-resource environments can often be more efficient and innovative, containing many lessons we, in the North, could learn from). This point is also made by Piron et al:

“… the production of technical and social innovations is rich in Sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa, as evidenced by the high number of articles on this subject in the Sci-Dev magazine, specializing in science for development, or in the ecofin site, an economic information agency turned towards Africa. But these are mostly local innovations that mobilize local resources and often recycled materials to, for example, introduce electricity into a village, better irrigate fields or offer lighting after sunset. The aim of these innovations is to contribute to local development and not to the development of international markets, unlike innovations designed in the North which, while targeting the countries of the South, remain highly marketable – just think of milk powder or GMO seeds. The issue of open access to scientific publications is a very secondary issue for local innovators in such a context”. (Piron et al. 2016)

These examples of innovation aside, there are many cases where the ‘epistemic alienation’ described above leads to ‘the exclusion or contempt of local knowledge’ (Mboa, 2016), even amongst researchers in the global South.

“In fact, Western culture abundantly relayed in the media and textbooks is shown to be superior to other cultures. This situation is pushing Africans to multiply their efforts to reach the ideal of life of the “white”. This situation seems to block their ability to think locally, or even to be reactive. Thus, faced with a given situation specific to the African context, many are those who first draw on the resources of Western thinking to propose elements of answers.” Mboa (2016)

Free and open access as ‘showcasing products’

The Research4Life (R4L) programme also comes in for criticism from Piron et al. which will come as a shock to Northern publishing people who often use the ‘… but they’ve got Research4Life’ line when faced with evidence of global research inequalities.

“… while pretending to charitably provide university libraries in the Global South with free access to pre-defined packages of paid journals from the North, this program, set up by for-profit scientific publishers, maintains the dependence of these libraries, limits their understanding of the true network of open access publications and, above all, improves the market for the products sold by these publishers.” Piron et al (2017)

“… this program encourages the continued reliance of these libraries on an external program, designed in the North and showcasing Northern products, while it may disappear as soon as this philanthropic desire is exhausted or as soon as trading partners will not find any more benefits.”

Whilst I still think R4L is a great initiative (I know many researchers in the Global South who are very appreciative of the programme), it’s difficult to disagree with the conclusion that:

‘… this program mainly improves the opportunities of Northern publishers without contributing to the sustainable empowerment of university libraries in the South … this charity seems very hypocritical, let alone arbitrary, since it can stop at any time.” Piron (2017)

Of course, the same could be said of Article Processing Charge (APC) waivers for developing country authors. Waivers are currently offered by the majority of journals from the big publishers (provided according to the same HINARI list of countries provided by Research4Life), although sometimes you have to dig deep into the terms and conditions pages to find them. Waivers are good for publishers to showcase their corporate social responsibility and provide diversity of authorship. However, they are unsustainable – this charity is unlikely to last forever, especially as they rely on the pool of Southern authors being relatively limited. It should also be noted that developing countries with the most active, growing researcher communities such as Nigeria, South Africa and India do not qualify for either R4L access or APC waivers.

Speaking of APCs, something I observe regularly amongst Southern researchers is a confusion over the ‘Gold’ OA author-pays model, and this too is noted:

“In northern countries, many researchers, especially in STEM (Björk and Solomon, 2012) [ 7 ], believe (wrongly) that open access now means “publication fees charged to authors” … this commercial innovation appears to be paying off, as these costs appear to be natural to researchers.” Piron (2017)

This also appears to be paying off in the Global South – authors seem resigned to pay some kind of charge to publish, and it is common to have to point out to authors that over two-thirds of OA journals and 99% of subscription journals do not charge to publish (although, the rise of ‘predatory’ journals may have magnified this misunderstanding that pay-to-publish is the norm).

It may be tempting to think of these inequalities as an unfortunate historical accident, and that our attempts to help the Global South ‘catch up’ are just a little clumsy and patronising. However, Piron argues that this is no mere accident, but the result of colonial exploitation that still resonates in existing power structures today:

“Open access is then easily seen as a means of catching up, at least filling gaps in libraries and often outdated teaching […] Africa is considered as lagging behind the modern world, which would explain its underdevelopment, to summarize this sadly hegemonic conception of north-south relations. By charity, Northern countries then feel obliged to help, which feeds the entire industry surrounding development aid [….] this model of delay, violently imposed by the West on the rest of the world through colonization, has been used to justify the economic and cognitive exploitation (Connell, 2014) of colonized continents without which modernity could not have prospered.” Piron (2017)

To build the path or take the path?

Of course, the authors do admit that access to Northern research has a role to play in the Global South, provided the access is situated in local contexts:

“… African science should be an African knowledge, rooted in African contexts, that uses African epistemologies to answer African questions, while also using other knowledge from all over the world, including Western ones, if they are relevant locally.” Piron (2017)

However, the practical reality of Open Access for Southern researchers is often overstated. There is a crucial distinction between making content ‘open’ and providing the means to access that content. As Piron et al. 2017 say:

“To put a publication in open access: is it, to build the path (technical or legal) that leads to it, or is it to make it possible for people to take this path? This distinction is crucial to understand the difference in meaning of open access between the center and the periphery of the world-system of science, although only an awareness of the conditions of scientific research in the Southern countries makes it possible to visualize it, to perceive it.”

This crucial difference between availability and accessibility has also been explained by Anne Powell on Scholarly Kitchen. There are many complex barriers to ‘free’ and ‘open’ content actually being accessed and used. The most obvious of these barriers is internet connectivity, but librarian training, language and digital literacy also feature significantly:

“Finding relevant open access articles on the web requires digital skills that, as we have seen, are rare among Haitian and African students for whom the web sometimes comes via Facebook … Remember that it is almost always when they arrive at university that these students first touch a computer. The catching up is fast, but many reflexes acquired since the primary school in the countries of the North must be developed before even being able to imagine that there are open access scientific texts on the web to make up for the lack of documents in the libraries. In the words of the Haitian student Anderson Pierre, “a large part of the students do not know the existence of these resources or do not have the digital skills to access and exploit them in order to advance their research project”. Piron (2017)

Barriers to local knowledge exchange

Unfortunately, this is made even more difficult by resistance and misunderstanding of the internet and digital tools from senior leadership in Africa:

“Social representations of the web, science and copyright also come into play, especially among older academics, a phenomenon that undermines the appropriation of digital technologies at the basis of open access in universities.” Piron et al. (2017)

“To this idea that knowledge resides only in printed books is added a representation of the web which also has an impact on the local resistance to open access: our fieldwork has allowed us to understand that, for many African senior academics, the web is incompatible with science because it contains only documents or sites that are of low quality, frivolous or entertaining. These people infer that science in open access on the web is of lower quality than printed science and are very surprised when they learn that most of the journals of the world-system of science exist only in dematerialized format. … Unfortunately, these resistances slow down the digitization and the web dissemination of African scientific works, perpetuating these absurd situations where the researchers of the same field in neighboring universities do not know what each other is doing”. Piron et al. (2017)

This complaint about in-country communication from researchers in the South can be common, but there are signs that open access can make a difference – as an example, in Sri Lanka, I’ve spoken to researchers who say that communicating research findings within the country has always been a problem, but the online portal Sri Lanka Journals Online (currently 77 open access Sri Lankan journals) has started to improve this situation. This project was many years in the making, and has involved training journal editors and librarians in loading online content and improving editorial practices for open access. The same, of course, could be said for African Journals Online, which has potential to facilitate sharing on a larger scale.

Arguably, some forms of institutional resistance to openness in the Global South have a neocolonial influence – universities have largely borrowed and even intensified the Northern ‘publish or perish’ mantra which focuses the academic rewards system almost entirely on journal publications, often in northern-indexed journals, rather than on impact on real world development.

“The system of higher education and research in force in many African countries remains a remnant of colonization, perpetuated by the reproduction, year after year, of the same ideals and principles. This reproduction is assured not by the old colonizers but by our own political leaders who are perpetuating a system structured according to a classical partitioning that slows down any possible communication between researchers within the country or with the outside world, even worse between the university and the immediate environment. For the ruling class, the changes taking place in the world and the society’s needs seem to have no direct link to the university.” Mboa (2016)

Mboa calls this partitioning between researchers and outsiders as “a tight border between society and science”:

“African researchers are so attached to the ideal of neutrality of science and concern of its ‘purity’ that they consider contacts with ordinary citizens as ‘risks’ or threats and that they prefer to evolve in their ‘ivory tower’. On the other hand, ordinary citizens feel so diminished compared to researchers that to talk to them about their eventual involvement in research is a taboo subject …” Mboa (2016)

Uncolonising openness

So what is the answer to all these problems? Is it in building the skills of researchers and institutions or a complete change of philosophy?

“The colonial origin of African science (Mvé-Ondo, 2005) is certainly no stranger to this present subjugation of African science to northern research projects, nor to its tendency to imitate Western science without effort. Contextualization, particularly in the quasi-colonial structuring of sub-Saharan African universities (Fredua-Kwarteng, 2015) and in maintaining the use of a colonial language in university education. Considering this institutionalized epistemic alienation as yet another cognitive injustice, Mvé-Ondo wonders “how to move from a westernization of science to a truly shared science” (p.49) and calls for “epistemological mutation”, “rebirth”, modernizing “African science at the crossroads of local knowledge and northern science – perhaps echoing the call of Fanon (1962/2002) for a “new thinking” in the Third World countries, detached from European model, decolonized.” Piron et al. (2017)

For this to happen, open access must be about more than just access – but something much more holistic and equitable:

“Can decentralized, decolonised open access then contribute to creating more cognitive justice in global scientific production? Our answer is clear: yes, provided that it is not limited to the question of access for scientific and non-scientific readers to scientific publications. It must include the concern for origin, creation, local publishing and the desire to ensure equity between the accessibility of the publications of the center of the world system and that of knowledge from the periphery. It thus proposes to replace the normative universalism of globalized science with an inclusive universalism, open to the ecology of knowledges and capable of building an authentic knowledge commons (Gruson-Daniel, 2015; Le Crosnier, 2015), hospitable for the knowledge of the North and the South”. Piron et al. (2017)

Mboa sees the solution to this multifaceted problem in ‘open science’:

“[Cognitive injustice comes via] … endogenous causes (citizens and African leaders) and by exogenous causes (capitalism, colonization, the West). The knowledge of these causes allowed me to propose ways to prevent our downfall. Among these means, I convened open science as a tool available to our leaders and citizens for advancing cognitive justice. For although the causes are endogenous and exogenous, I believe that a wound heals from the inside outwards.” Mboa (2016).

Mboa explains how open science approaches can overcome some of these problems in this book chapter, but here he provides a short summary of the advantages of open science for African research:

“It’s a science that rejects the ivory tower and the separation between scientists and the rest of the population of the country. In short, it’s a science released from control by a universal capitalist standard, by hierarchical authority and by pre-established scientific classes. From this perspective, open science offers the following advantages:

it brings science closer to society;
it promotes fair and sustainable development;
it allows the expression of minority and / or marginalized groups, as well as their knowledge;
it promotes original, local and useful research in the country;
it facilitates access to a variety of scientific and technical information;
it is abundant, recent and up to date;
it develops digital skills;
it facilitates collaborative work;
it gives a better visibility to research work.

By aiming to benefit from these advantages, researchers and African students fight cognitive injustice. For this, open access science relies on open access, free licenses, free computing, and citizen science.” Mboa (2016).

But in order for open science to succeed, digital literacy must be rapidly improved to empower students and researchers in the South:

“Promoting inclusive access therefore requires engaging at the same time in a decolonial critique of the relationship between the center and the periphery and urging universities in the South to develop the digital literacy of their student or teacher members.” Piron et al. (2017)

It also requires improving production of scientific works (‘grey’ literature, as well as peer-reviewed papers) in the South for a two-way North/South conversation:

“Then, we propose to rethink the usual definition of open access to add the mandate to enhance the visibility of scientific work produced in universities in the South and thus contribute to greater cognitive justice in global scientific production.” Piron (2017)

And providing open access needs to be understood in context:

“… if we integrate the concern for the enhancement of the knowledge produced in the periphery and the awareness of all that hinders the creation of this knowledge, then open access can become a tool of cognitive justice at the service of the construction of an inclusive universalism peculiar to a just open science.” Piron, Diouf, Madiba (2017)

In summary then, we need to rethink the way that the global North seeks to support the South – a realignment of this relationship from mere access to empowerment through sustainable capacity building:

“Africa’s scientific development aid, if it is needed, should therefore be oriented much less towards immediate access to Northern publications and more to local development of tools and the strengthening of the digital skills of academics and librarians. These tools and skills would enable them not only to take advantage of open access databases, but also to digitize and put open access local scientific works in open archives, journals or research centers.” Piron (2017)

So what next?

Even if you disagree with many the above ideas, I hope that this has provided many of you with some food for thought. Open Access must surely be about more than just knowledge flow from North to South (or, for that matter the academy to the public, or well-funded researchers to poorly funded researchers). Those on the periphery must also be given a significant voice and a place at the table. For this to happen, many researchers (and their equivalents outside academia) need training and support in digital skills; some institutional barriers also need to be removed or overcome; and of course a few cherished, long-held ideas must be seriously challenged.

“These injustices denote anything that diminishes the capacity of academics in these countries to deploy the full potential of their intellectual talents, their knowledge and their capacity for scientific research to serve their country’s sustainable local development”. Piron et al., (2016).

What do you think…?

▻http://journalologik.uk/?p=149
#édition_scientifique #OA #open_access #Afrique #Afrique_francophone #décolonisation #post-colonialisme

Nodle Releases #rap Video For the Holiday and Celebrates 1 Million Daily Nodes
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▻https://medium.com/media/bd3027fcd642c3491806c49be5edcecf/href“Connecting the world’s IoTMaking it easy for you and meWe use Bluetooth, that’s the keyIt’s superior #connectivity”Nodle.io is the first low power network for the IoT, announcing today the release of our rap single for the holiday and the connection of one million daily nodes.We provide internet connectivity to IoT devices by crowdsourcing a network of smartphones and other IoT devices. We dramatically reduce the cost of device-to-device communication and are dedicated to making the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. The Nodle network, called The Citizen Network, is made up hundreds of thousands of “crowd sourced” devices that work collectively to provide internet access.Nodle’s network is the largest dedicate IoT network (...)

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Net of Rights - YouTube
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1U0Ebix-aQ

Net of Rights is a short documentary film which explores the relation between Internet protocols and the promotion and protection of Human Rights. Internet Engineers have defined the Internet as a network of networks, providing connectivity for all users, at all times, for any content. Internet connectivity increases the capacity for individuals to exercise their rights, the core of the Internet, its architectural design is therefore closely intertwined with the human rights framework. However, the assertion that technology and the design of standards and protocols is a ethically neutral task are still commonplace. The series of interviews recorded during the 92nd meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), held in Dallas, Texas, in March 2015, demonstrated that this belief in the neutrality of standards and protocols is starting to change. It is becoming more apparent that promoting an open, secure, unfiltered and reliable Internet is essential for the rights to privacy, expression and assembly. But how can these concepts be addressed on the protocol level? Without taking human rights into account while developing protocols, the human rights-enabling characteristics of the Internet are at risk. While the Internet was designed with freedom and openness of communication as core values, as the growth in scale and commercialization of the Internet have caused a shift in those values. The influence of such world-views started to compete with other values. The rights-enabling characteristics of the Internet will be endangered if they are not properly defined, described and protected. The reverse is also true: if we don’t protect human rights online, we risk loss of functionality and connectivity of the Internet itself.

#Internet #Droits_humains #Protocoles

Silicon Valley exploits time and space to extend frontiers of capitalism | Evgeny Morozov | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/29/silicon-valley-exploits-space-evgeny-morozov

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Space_Shuttle_Program_Commemorative_Patch.png

The US Congress quietly passed an important piece of legislation this month. The Space Resource Exploration and Utilisation Act – yet to be signed by Barack Obama – grants American companies unconstrained rights to the mining of any resources – from water to gold. The era of space exploration is over; the era of space exploitation has begun!

While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty explicitly prohibits governments from claiming planets and other celestial resources, as their property, Congress reasoned that such restrictions do not apply to the materials found and mined there.

The bill’s timing might, at first, seem surprising – after all, Nasa, the US space agency, is almost constantly fighting against budget cuts – but is easily explained by the entrance of new space explorers on to the scene, namely the Silicon Valley billionaires who are pouring millions into “disrupting” space, Nasa, and the space programme of yore. From Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk, Silicon Valley’s elites have committed considerable resources to the cause.

And while the long-term plan – to mine asteroids for precious metals or water, which can then be used to fuel spaceships – might still be a decade or more away, Silicon Valley has a very different business proposition in mind. Space, for these companies, offers the most cost-effective way to wire the unconnected parts of the globe by beaming internet connectivity from balloons, drones and satellites.

Morph’s Outpost on the Digital Frontier
▻http://morphsoutpostonthedigitalfrontier.blogspot.de
On arrive de loin. A l’époque de la space shuttle les limites du cyber-espace étaient encore inconnues et illimitées.

Wired wrote briefly about Morph’s Outpost in the September/October 1993 issue, online at
▻http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/streetcred.html?pg=8

Morph’s Outpost - By Will Kreth

Don’t knock programmers. Contrary to popular belief, many of them do have lives and look nothing like the bespectacled, pasty-faced, Jolt-cola- slurping traitorous overweight hacker depicted in Jurassic Park (personally, I was thrilled when he got eaten in the Jeep). Some of them ride mountain bikes, kayak, play alto sax and read books by Peter Matheissen. Some of them were never interested in programming until HyperCard, while others have been working on PC’s since the birth of the Altair in the ’70s. Until recently, they’ve been stuck wading through various patently dull programming magazines for the information they needed to stay on the edge.

The rise of interactive multimedia has given birth to a new crop of programmers, and they’re starving for deep technical information about their current (albeit over-hyped) obsession. Now they have a new magazine dedicated to their cause. Morph’s Outpost on the Digital Frontier is the brainchild of Craig LaGrow, a founder of the popular Computer Language, and Editor-in-Chief Doug Millison. Augmenting the magazine’s seriously technical treatment of authoring environments and the like is a whimsical cartoon character named (what else?) Morph, who runs his Outpost on the boundary between cyberspace and the digital jungle. He’s the silicon- surfing Sherpa who’ll outfit you with the “intel” you need to make the right decisions on hardware, software, scripting tricks, and marketing your creations. Morph, who looks as if he just came out of a graffiti-artist’s spray-paint can, has assembled several notable names within the industry to contribute to the Outpost on a regular basis - like Rockley Miller (publisher and editor of Multimedia and Videodisc Monitor), Richard Doherty (editor of Envisioneering), Tony Bove (publisher and editor of the Macromedia User Journal and the Bove & Rhodes Inside Report), and Michael Moon (of the market research firm Gistics, Inc.). Do you know your XCMDs from CLUTs? Script-X from a 3:2 pull-down ratio for mastering a videodisc? Then Morph’s Outpost on the Digital Frontier is a must-read for all you seasoned media fanatics surfing the Digital Pipeline.

Digital Work CyberTrends
▻http://people.duke.edu/~mccann/q-work.htm
Un an après la catastrophe de la Challenger l’espace sans fin du monde digital se traduisait en job opportunities sans limites.

Work in Cyberspace
Rise of the Personal Virtual Workspace
Rise of the American Perestroika
The Demise of the Job
Rise of Entreployees
Rise of the Movable Job
Demise of the Department
Rise of the Project
Demise of the Hierarchy
Rise of Multimedia in Corporations
Big Business in Your Little PC
Rise of the Digital Wealthy
Devolution of Large Entities
Rise of the Individual
Rise of the Video Communications
Rise of Internet Collaboration
Rise of the Virtual Office
Rise of Soft Factories
Dematerialization of Manufacturing
Put Your Knowledge to Work
Rise of New Organizational Structures
Demise of the Branch
Rise of Document-centric Computing
Rise of Intranet
Rise of Knowledge Worker Hell
Rise of a New Life in the Web
Rise of Business Ecosystems
Death of Competition
Rise of New Industry Definitions
Rise of Intellectual Mobility
Rise of the Internet Job Engine
Rise of Coordination-Intensive Business
Rise of the Internetworked Business Structures
Rise of Global Networks
Rise of Globalization
Rise of the Underdeveloped
Rise of Free Agent, USA

InfluenceHR | The Shift From Wellness to Well-being : Empowering a Workforce with a Whole-employee Approach
▻http://influencehr.com/sessions/the-shift-from-wellness-to-well-being-empowering-a-workforce-with-a-who
Depuis on chasse du cerveau dans la silicon valley , alors il faut faire des efforts pour en attirer les meilleurs.

Speaker:
Dr. Michael M. Moon, CEO and Principal Analyst, ExcelHRate Research and Advisory Services
Workplace wellness is undergoing a transformation from a limited view of employee physical wellness to a more holistic view that also includes employees’ emotional, mental, and financial well-being — inside and outside the workplace. To really engage employees, employers need to provide the right balance of resources, programs, tools, and technology to enable employees to own and manage their well-being along with building a culture that supports these initiatives. The HR vendor community has a tremendous opportunity in helping employers to empower their employees to own their well-being through innovative technologies that deliver personalized learning, feedback, and targeted interventions.

Michael Jay Moon - Wikipedia
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jay_Moon#Awards_and_associations
C’est l’occasion pour les vieux hippies et les habitants de première heure de la vallée de silicone de vendre quelques conférences.

Moon was a contributing editor for Morph’s Outpost from 1993-1995, launching the magazine and writing a monthly column. A technical publication on emerging multimedia design technology, it was based on the design of ’60s underground newspapers. He was a blogger for Customer Engagement Agencies, DAM for Marketing and Engagement Marketspace. In 2000, he co-authored Firebrands: Building Brand Loyalty in the Internet Age with Doug Millison. The book is now available in 13 languages.

Closing the Digital Frontier - The Atlantic
▻http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/closing-the-digital-frontier/308131
Une chosequi ne change jamais dans le monde capitaliste est l’incertitude. Où trouver the next big thing (#TNBT), commen investir, comment survivre. Alors les spécialistes annoncent des vérités assez simples pour plaire aux décervelés de la finance.

The era of the Web browser’s dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet’s founding ideology—that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral— suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media—and of the Web itself?

Michael Hirschorn July/August 2010 Issue

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft : Which Will Fall First ?
▻http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/01/06/google-apple-facebook-amazon-microsoft-which-will-fall-first

Which company will fall first, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answer by Terrence Yang, Angel investor, on Quora:

I own stock in Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, but if I had to pick which tech giant I think will fall first, I would pick Facebook.

That being said:

Zuckerberg’s latest moves include:
Keeping control of Facebook even after he donated almost all his Facebook stock to charity. Facebook shareholder suit alleges secret texts from Marc Andreessen to Mark Zuckerberg.
Being the only public company CEO to skip Trump’s tech summit. I bet most shareholders wanted him to attend.
Making his 2017 resolution “to have visited and met people in every state in the US by the end of the year. After a tumultuous last year, my hope for this challenge is to get out and talk to more people about how they’re living, working, and thinking about the future.” Mark Zuckerberg - Every year I take on a personal... Maybe he is sincere in trying to better understand America, given that Facebook, together with Google, account for almost all the online ad revenue. Google and Facebook are booming. Is the rest of the digital ad business sinking?
Zuckerberg said he is no longer an atheist and that religion is very important (hat tip Hunter Johnson). (Mark Zuckerberg says he’s no longer an atheist, believes ‘religion is very important’.)
All of these moves are more consistent with someone laying the groundwork for a possible run for political office someday than with someone singularly focused on growing the Facebook empire. What would Steve Jobs do?
People have speculated before about Zuckerberg’s aspirations to run for President. (Does Mark Zuckerberg Want To Run For President?)
I believe his actions are an investment risk factor. At the margin, his latest moves drove some investors to sell Facebook stock (raising its cost of capital) and possibly providing cheaper capital to the Facebook’s competitors (if investors sell Facebook and buy Snap, for example).
Facebook’s metrics are wrong, though others (Google?) may have the same issue. It’s not just Facebook: Digital advertisers say internet metrics are often wrong Facebook Says It Found More Miscalculated Metrics.
Robert Scoble says spatial computing will dominate, meaning you will be able to physically walk around in the real world and see virtual items placed on them. Scobleizer - Entrepreneur in Residence.
Scoble said he would ask Zuckerberg this: “How are you going to compete with a “mixed reality” release of the iPhone that’s coming in 11 months? I expect that iPhone will sell 60 million in first weekend…"
Scoble goes on to say: “That’s more VR sold than all others combined. In one weekend … If I were at Facebook I’d get the entire Oculus team to pivot. Toward mixed reality glasses. Why? Microsoft’s execs already told me they are betting 100% on mixed reality (with its Microsoft HoloLens product). The strategy at Microsoft is “Cloud + Hololens.” That’s it. The entirety of a $455 billion company is betting on mixed reality.” Apple Strategy 2017. Very important change to iPhone coming (hat tip to Leo Harsha).
Oculus headset sales are low. VR is taking longer to take off than some guessed. VR headset sales by device 2016 | Statista.
Instagram is doing a great job copying Snap’s popular features and avoiding the unpopular ones (fast follower). But they don’t have anything like Spectacles yet. Instagram’s Best Move in 2016? Copying Snapchat — The Motley Fool Snapchat vs. Instagram: Who’s Copying Whom Most?
Even Zuckerberg’s write-up and videos about Jarvis home AI reveals Facebook’s weaknesses. While Amazon, Google and Apple can combine hardware and software to give you a better, more seamless experience via Echo/Alexa or the Google and Apple equivalents. To date Facebook only has software.
Some others cite Microsoft or Apple as the most likely to fail. I disagree.

SILICON VALLEY (THE BIG FIVE) RULEZ

Tech Companies Are Dominating the Stock Market as Never Before (July 29 2016)
▻http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/07/29/the_world_s_5_most_valuable_companies_apple_google_microsoft_amazon_facebook.

Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future ( JAN. 20, 2016)
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/technology/techs-frightful-5-will-dominate-digital-life-for-foreseeable-future.html?_r

The Big 5 are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook
(August 2, 2016)
▻http://www.greenm3.com/gdcblog/2016/8/2/the-big-5-are-apple-google-microsoft-amazon-facebook

The Big 5 Year in Review : Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook (December 29, 2015)
▻https://stratechery.com/2015/the-big-5-year-in-review-apple-google-microsoft-amazon-and-facebook

#silicon_valley #capitalisme #technologie #disruption

a Mirai botnet perturbed Liberia’s internet connectivity

Liberia is connected to internet via only one undersea cable (part of ACE - African Coast to Europe) of 5.12 Tbps, shared between all 23 countries connected via ACE.

Mirai has been targeting IP addresses of Lonestarcell MTN, a telecom operators managing the Liberian ACE leg, flooding the pipe with 500 Gbps and thereby impacting Liberia’s internet several times. (well, the 6% of the country that actually has internet access).
Lonestarcell MTN is one of the 4 telecom operators

▻http://thehackernews.com/2016/11/ddos-attack-mirai-liberia.html

Many media, including BBC, PC World, The Guardian, Forbes, IBtimes, Quartz, Mashable, The Register, inaccurately reported that Liberia was totally cut off.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_map18.svg

▻https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/11/did-the-mirai-botnet-really-take-liberia-offline

“Both our ACE submarine cable monitoring systems and servers hosted (locally) in LIXP (Liberia Internet Exchange Point) show no downtime in the last 3 weeks,” [the general manager of Cable Consortium of Liberia] said. “While it is likely that a local operator might have experienced a brief outage, we have no knowledge of a national Internet outage and there are no data to substantial that.”

Mirai announces its attacks here:

▻https://twitter.com/MiraiAttacks

#Mirai #DDoS #botnet
#undersea_cable #câble_sous-marin

State of the Internet Connectivity Visualization | Akamai
▻https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/state-of-the-internet-connectivity-visualization.jsp

Internet connection speeds and adoption rates by geography

Select a metric from the pull-down menu: average connection speed, average peak connection speed, unique IP addresses, 4 Mbps Broadband, 10 Mbps Broadband and 15 Mbps Broadband.

#connectivité #internet #cartographie (moche mais données téléchargeables)

Akamai’s State of the Internet - Q4 2015 Report
▻https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/resources-connectivity-2015-Q4-state-of-the-internet-report.html

“In this report, you’ll get detailed statistics about Internet connectivity and usage in the fourth quarter of 2015 as well as Internet trends over time.”

#internet_connexion_réseau_mobile_fibre_bande_passante_clevermarks

Alternative Network Deployments : Taxonomy, characterization, technologies and architectures
►https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-gaia-alternative-network-deployments

Abstract

This document presents a taxonomy of a set of “Alternative Network Deployments” emerged in the last decade with the aim of bringing Internet connectivity to people. They employ architectures and topologies different from those of mainstream networks, and rely on alternative business models.

The document also surveys the technologies deployed in these networks, and their differing architectural characteristics, including a set of definitions and shared properties.

The classification considers models such as Community Networks, Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), networks owned by individuals but leased out to network operators who use them as a low-cost medium to reach the underserved population, and networks that provide connectivity by sharing wireless resources of the users.

classifications et clarifications sur le #cccp, via @stephane

Grosse attaque par déni de service contre l’important hébergeur #Linode. Exceptionnelle par sa durée (plusieurs jours) et son intensité.

►http://www.scmagazine.com/cloud-hosting-company-linode-sees-service-interruptions-for-ddos-attacks/article/462535 ▻http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/29/day_four_of_linode_data_center_attacks

#sécurité_Internet #dDoS #attaque_par_déni_de_service

Tim Berners-Lee “just says no” to internet.org

▻http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/29/tim-berners-lee-urges-britain-to-fight-snoopers-charter

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/5/29/1432905359571/dffff0c3-c2de-4a28-9e42-6c113b9ed1d9-2060x1236.jpeg?w=1200&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=f14909a86e34d52f886465631955f28e

Tim Berners-Lee urges Britain to fight ’snooper’s charter’ | Technology | The Guardian

Berners-Lee also warned about attempts to improve internet access around the world by offering cut-down versions of the web, such as Facebook’s Internet.org project. Users should “just say no” to such proposals, he insisted. (...)

The Web We Want campaign is promoting five key principles for the future of the web: Freedom of expression online and offline, affordable access to the net, protection of user data and privacy, a decentralised and open infrastructure, and net neutrality.

But the campaign is insistent that the five principles are a minimum starting point, and that compromise on those points is not helpful to the goal. That puts it in conflict with more than just the usual suspects. When asked about Internet.org, Facebook’s non-profit organisation that aims to extend access to a few select websites in the developing world, Berners-Lee said people should “just say no” to the project.

When it comes to compromising on net neutrality, “I tend to say ‘just say no’,” he said.

“In the particular case of somebody who’s offering … something which is branded internet, it’s not internet, then you just say no. No it isn’t free, no it isn’t in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something … [only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”

#internet #neutralité #internet.org #facebook

To Unite the Earth, Connect It - Bono and Mark Zuckerberg - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/to-unite-the-earth-connect-it.html

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/09/27/opinion/27bono-img/27bono-img-facebookJumbo.jpg

attention gros calibre : là on a affaire à des comptes “platinum++” chez WhiteSave.me (▻http://seenthis.net/messages/393508)

the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (...) lists 17 goals and 169 targets, and one of these, 9(c), is a target that we believe is crucial to accelerate realization of all the others: a commitment to provide Internet connectivity for all by 2020.

Today over half the people on this planet don’t have access. That is not good for anyone — not for the disempowered and disconnected, and not for the other half, whose commerce and security depend on having stable societies.

(...) More technology companies and entrepreneurs must take more responsibility. #Silicon_Valley should look beyond itself and act more on issues like education, health care and the refugee crisis. We challenge the tech industry to do far more for those most marginalized, those trapped in poverty, and those beyond or on the edge of the network.

#connectivité #inégalités #internet

Offline.js – Handle your users losing their internet connection like a pro
▻http://github.hubspot.com/offline/docs/welcome

Offline.js is a library to automatically alert your users when they’ve lost internet connectivity, like Gmail.

It captures #AJAX requests which were made while the connection was down, and remakes them when it’s back up, so your app reacts perfectly.

It has a number of beautiful themes and requires no configuration.

#js #javascript #webapp

Avant de penser que l’internet puisse être une institution signifiante de défense des libertés publiques, peut-être vaudrait-il mieux constater qu’il est fragile, en constatant que trois pauvres malheureux semblent pouvoir déconnecter peut-être involontairement 75.000.000 d’usagers

Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said on his Facebook page that the three men had been caught diving from an inflatable dinghy as they worked underwater to try and cut the cable at a point just north of the port city of Alexandria, AP reports. Alexandria is the main entry point for the multiple submarine cables that bring internet connectivity to Egypt.

▻http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/egypt_cables_cut_arrest

#Commotion Wireless : interview of Josh King | Intelligence Stratégique
►http://www.intelligence-strategique.eu/2011/commotion-wireless-interview-of-josh-king

We’re developing Commotion primarily because we see a great need, in efforts like the Arab Spring protests, for #activists to have the ability to communicate securely and anonymously in a local fashion, as well as share sparse sources of Internet connectivity. It deals only obliquely with the question of identity and #anonymity on the #Internet.

#cccp

US military has dozens of options to restore Internet in Egypt-like countries
►http://ecommerce-journal.com/news/31069_us-military-has-dozens-options-restore-internet-egypt-count

When countries like Egypt switch off Internet connectivity for their people nations like America have a lot of means to reconnect it again and the US military have a number of options to do it. The only one problem about it is: “It could be considered an act of war,” says John Arquilla, a leading military futurist.

#Internet #US_Army #Egypte