Friday, May 10, 11:15am-12:15pm
Room: Joseph & Rosalie Segal Centre (1400-1430)
Presenters: Dave S. Ghamandi, University of Virginia; Sherri Barnes, University of California Santa Barbara Library; Eileen Joy, punctum books
Description: In this dynamic conversation, panelists will use the principles of solidarity and self-determination to explore the work of the newly formed ScholarLed, a consortium of open access monograph publishers, and to critically examine other open access publishing and scholarly communication efforts.
Despite early resistance to open access, the academic publishing oligopoly has used its position to develop a neoliberal model of OA. As the amount of market-based, commodified open access knowledge increases each year, the struggle for a more democratic form of open access becomes more difficult. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the scholarly community to embody radically different organizing principles including cooperation, solidarity, mutual aid, and self-determination.
This panel will explore how ScholarLed is putting these principles into practice by discussing their goals, tactics, and project proposals. Panelists will also discuss similarities with this organization’s praxis and the strategies employed during the Black Power and Black Arts movements. The Black radical tradition has a deep, but mostly ignored, history of responding to racial and social oppression and economic exploitation with self-respect, self-organization, self-management, and self-determination.
The conversation will include a critical look at the values, rhetoric, and tactics involved in the effort to “secure community-controlled infrastructure.” How far can a reform approach rooted in a market model and continued negotiation with the publishing oligopoly take us? How do “community-controlled” and “community-owned” reflect two very different sets of tactics? Panelists will describe the ways commercial entities continue to co-opt the language of the public good to undermine movements, the contradiction of ethical consumption under capitalism, and the need to own the means of production.