Public and static slides for a presentation on Open Knowledge Institutions at Exeter University Egenis Centre on 13 January 2020

1. Open Knowledge Institutions
Is there a future for the university in a networked world?
@cameronneylon
cn@cameronneylon.net
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X
These slides - http://bit.ly/exeter-okis

2. Two foundational assumptions

3. 1. Knowledge is socially constructed

4. Knowledge is a product of groups

5. ESOTERIC
EXOTERIC
Ludwig Fleck (1981 [1935])
Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
‘Thought Collective’

6. Jerome Ravetz (1971)
Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems
Day to day activity as ‘craft’
‘Problem solving on artificial objects’
Shared artificial objects as shared knowledge
SCHOOL

7. Lotman’s stages of reception
1. Exoticism
2. Translation/Adaption
3. Abstraction
4. Dissolution
5. Re-transmission
Yuri Lotman (2009)
Dialogue Mechanisms in Universe of the Mind

8. CULTURE
GROUP
ENVIRONMENT
Hartley and Potts (2014)
Cultural Science

9. Situated Learning
Learning as identity formation, through
legitimate peripheral participation in a
community of practice
Questions of the sustainability of learning
communities and the tension between
continuity and displacement
Lave and Wenger (1991)
Situated learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

10. Common features

11. Knowledge production at the
boundaries between groups

12. Abstraction and loss of context as
central to knowledge creation
translation/entropy/abstraction

13. Embedded knowledge within groups
craft/collective/dissolution/culture/repertoire

14. Groups within (overlapping)
groups in a fractal structure
Implicitly: Latour, Lave & Wenger
or explicitly: Fleck, Ravetz, Hartley & Potts

15. Not common features:
What knowledge is or does

16. How are the boundaries…
…sustained?
…managed?
…diversified?
…discovered?

17. How are the groups…
…sustained?
…managed?
…diversified?
…discovered?

18. How are their interactions…
…sustained?
…managed?
…diversified?
…discovered?

19. Two foundational assumptions

20. 2. Knowledge is Growing

21. Measured by inputs/outputs

22. de Solla Price, Big Science, Little Science (1963)

23. de Solla Price, Big Science, Little Science (1963)
Nlm.nih.gov

24. de Solla Price, Big Science, Little Science (1963)
Nlm.nih.gov
Schofer and Meyer (2005), American Sociological Review 70:898

25. Measured by ‘scope’ or ‘power’

27. Knowledge is a product of groups

28. Knowledge is scaling

29. Groups do not scale…

32. Adapted from an original
Created by Richard Slade
from the Noun Project

38. Adapted from an original
Created by Richard Slade
from the Noun Project

39. …and yet it grows…

40. collective action problem
Knowledge production is a

41. collective action…
Institutions support

42. “Institutions are the the prescriptions
that humans use to organize all forms
of repetitive and structured
interactions”
organisations/culture/practice/repertoire/language
Elinor Ostrom – Governing the Commons

43. Shared culture & institutions
can support collective action…

44. …but also have limits to scale

45. Growth
Intrinsic Limit
Institutional Innovation
Growth
Intrinsic Limit
Adoption

46. 1
10
100
1000
10000
100000
1000000
10000000
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

47. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
1
10
100
1000
10000
100000
1000000
10000000
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

48. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
The Web
?
Discoverability/Siloing
Trust

49. There will always be a next crisis…

51. The big claim…

52. 3. Our Institutional Innovations
are endogenous

53. Our institutions are (or at least were)
generative of institutional innovation

54. 4. The university as a platform

55. Universities are old institutions

56. Nanjing(1888)
SouthAfrica(1873)
1000 1500 2000
Karueein(859)
Bologna(1058)
Oxford(1096)
Salam
anca(1134)
Cam
bridge(1209)
CharlesUniversity
(1348)
Ghana(1958)
Calcutta(1857)
SantoTom
as(1611)

57. GhanaianIndependence(1960)
M
oroccanIndependence(1956)
Nanjing(1888)
SouthAfrica(1873)
1000 1500 2000
Karueein(859)
Bologna(1058)
Oxford(1096)
Salam
anca(1134)
Cam
bridge(1209)
CharlesUniversity
(1348)
Ghana(1958)
Calcutta(1857)
SantoTom
as(1611)
UnitedKingdom
(1707)
Spain(defacto1479)

58. GreatSchism
(1054)
Nanjing(1888)
SouthAfrica(1873)
1000 1500 2000
Karueein(859)
Bologna(1058)
Oxford(1096)
Salam
anca(1134)
Cam
bridge(1209)
CharlesUniversity
(1348)
Ghana(1958)
Calcutta(1857)
SantoTom
as(1611)
UnitedKingdom
(1707)
Spain(defacto1479)
Resolutionofthe
W
esternSchism
(1417)
GhanaianIndependence(1960)
M
oroccanIndependence(1956)

59. Interesting sites for political
and advocacy actions

60. How would you design a university?

61. …sustained?
…managed?
…diversified?
…discovered?

62. What platforms are needed?

64. Three first order principles

65. Three first order principles
Diversity

66. Three first order principles
Diversity
Coordination

67. Three first order principles
Diversity
Coordination
Communication

68. Three matching external pressures
Diversity
Coordination
Communication

69. Equity & Diversity
Three matching external pressures
Diversity
Coordination
Communication

70. Equity & Diversity
Engagement
Three matching external pressures
Diversity
Coordination
Communication

71. Equity & Diversity
Engagement
Open Access/
Research/Science
Three matching external pressures
Diversity
Coordination
Communication

72. Equity & Diversity
Engagement
Open Access/
Research/Science
Three expressions of ‘openness’
Diversity
Coordination
Communication
openness

73. Lucy Montgomery, John Hartley, Cameron Neylon, Malcolm Gillies,
Eve Gray, Carsten Herrman-Pillath, Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Joan
Leach, Jason Potts, Xiang Ren, Katherine Skinner, Cassidy Sugimoto,
Katie Wilson
‘This book advocates for
universities to become Open
Knowledge Institutions which
institutionalise our world’s
creative diversity to contribute to
the stock of human knowledge’
https://bookbook.pubpub.org/oki
Open Knowledge Institutions

74. …but actually they always have been
(in imperfect and limited ways)

75. (Gradual, limited, imperfect)
openness is an old aspiration

76. 5. Realpolitik

77. I would normally start here…

78. NOAA-NASA's Suomi NPP 1 January
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/ferocious-fires-in-australia-intensify

79. …and fear is a great motivator

80. Diversity
Communication Coordination
Impacts

81. Diversity
Communication Coordination
Impacts
Aspiration
(Policy/Narrative)
Deficit Models

82. Diversity
Communication Coordination
Impacts
Aspiration
(Policy/Narrative)
Deficit Models Investment/Priority Models
Action
(Investment)

83. Diversity
Communication Coordination
Impacts
Aspiration
(Policy/Narrative)
Deficit Models Investment/Priority Models
Action
(Investment)
Capacity Models
Outcomes
(Evaluation)

84. An information gap…

85. Diversity Coordination Communication
Specified
(closed)
• HESA
• Athena-Swan
• Industry collaboration
• Impact Case Studies
• OA compliance
• Bibliometrics
• ‘REFable’
Open
• ‘Climate’
• Inclusion &
retention
• New communities
• New approaches to
coordination
• ‘Public’ scholarship
• New modes of
communication

86. Need + External Pressure + Opportunity

88. “Our goal is to change the
stories that universities tell
about themselves, and to put
Open Knowledge at the heart
of those narratives”

89. Theory, Advocacy…

90. …Strategic Intelligence

91. 6. University performance as OKI

95. 7. The bigger picture

96. a) Pull the available levers
b) Tell a coherent & new story
c) Build community around
that narrative

97. Change is inevitable…

98. …but we’re good at it

99. @cameronneylon
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X
These slides - http://bit.ly/exeter-okis
More materials - https://zenodo.org/communities/coki/