PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT IS RESCHEDULED FOR TUESDAY, MAY 2, AT 9:30AM. SAME LOCATION.The growing membership of for-profit academic networks such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate has gone hand-in-hand with an increasing use of metrics in scholarly communication and the development of audit cultures in academia. As scholars we are increasingly required to use these websites to promote our work and to establish ourselves as brands. However, such platforms are often supported by business models that sell access to the data we produce in order to provide profits for the venture capitalists backing these ‘free’ platforms. This talk by Janneke Adema, Research Fellow at the Centre for Disruptive Media at Coventry University (UK), will provide an overview of the problems these kinds of platforms and the overarching trend towards metricisation and self-branding pose to the future of academia. Adema will discuss how they create inequalities in access to the conversations around our publications and run the risk of promoting academic conservatism. Yet most importantly, perhaps, she will explore how the measurements that support a quantified academia create major issues around privacy and surveillance. This talk will end with a discussion of various projects and grassroots initiatives—from Humanities Commons and Domain of One’s Own to the growing collective of scholar-led radical open access presses—that promote a more ethical publishing system.
Janneke Adema is the co-editor of two books, Really, We’re Helping To Build This . . . Business: The Academia.edu Files (London: Open Humanities Press 2016) co-edited with Gary Hall + and Symbiosis (Michigan: Open Humanities Press 2011) co-edited with Pete Woodbridge +. She has co-edited special issues of The Journal of Electronic Publishing and The Journal of Media Practice and has published in New Formations; The International Journal of Cultural Studies; New Media & Society; New Review of Academic Librarianship; Krisis. Journal for Contemporary Philosophy; and LOGOS: The Journal of the World Book Community. Her research focuses on experimental publishing, the material-discursive practices of scholarly research and communication, book history, media studies, critical theory and radical open access. She blogs at openreflections.
Refreshments will be served.
Co-sponsored with UCSB's Graduate Division; Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; and the Center for Information Technology and Society.
