Toward Open, Digital and Public Scholarship

Open, digital and public: Toward
a scholarship of refusal
Paul Prinsloo
University of South Africa
(Unisa) @14prinsp
Keynote: Medios, Producción y Educación
Universidad Estatal A Distancia (UNED)
San Jose, Costa Rica, 22 October, 2019
ImagebyArijitChakrabortyfromPixabay

Acknowledgement
I do not own the copyright of any of the images in this
presentation. I therefore acknowledge the original copyright
and licensing regime of every image used.
This presentation (excluding the images) is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License.

Overview of the presentation
1. Unsettling ‘scholarship’
2. The rationale for a scholarship of refusal
3. (Re)considering scholarship – Boyer plus one
4. Mapping some tentative pointers for a
scholarship of refusal

Exactly what/who is a
scholar? What are the
differences between
being a scholar, or
being a researcher, an
academic, a teacher
or educator, or a
scientist? And how
does this identity
change online?
1

Looking for a ‘scholar’ on Google

Source credit: http://www.webometrics.info/es/node/67

Notice their gender
and their discipline…
• 2/10=female
• All natural
scientists
• Human scientists?

The
institutional
context

What makes a scientist a
good scientist..
• H-index
• Citations
The h-index is an author-level metric that
attempts to measure both the productivity
and citation impact of the publications of a
scientist or scholar. The index is based on
the set of the scientist's most cited papers
and the number of citations that they have
received in other publications (Wikipedia)

Are not all scholarship
open and public? Is it
possible to ‘do’
scholarship in private,
behind closed doors,
in paywalled journals?
And what are the
implications?
2

Is it possible to see
yourself as scholar, but no
one else does? Can you
claim the title of being a
scholar, or is it something
a group of people bestow
on you, and when they
speak about you, they
state – oh, he or she is an
amazing scholar.
3

Who I
am as
scholar?
What I
do as
scholar
How my
scholarship is
measured/
recognised,
valued & by who
Race, gender,
class,
education,
socio-economic
background,
geopolitical/
disciplinary
location/
context
Pre-digital Digital Post-digital

Who/what determines ‘truth’? What are the
rules? What ‘speaks’, who has voice and who
has no voice?

What does
scholarship look like
in a digital age where
reputation and
‘truth’ are
increasingly fluid and
contested?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay
Why do wee need to talk of scholarship
as ‘open’, ‘digital’ and ‘public’…
7 Reasons…

Source credit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/28/trump-administration-takes-climate-denial-
new-heights/
When last was
there such an
attack on
science, on
research and on
research
findings?
1

Source credit: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01079-9
Research funding is
cut, privatized, and
researchers
increasingly
compete like
hungry dogs for
funding
2

Source credit: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/university-california-boycotts-publishing-giant-
elsevier-over-journal-costs-and-open
3Institutions
and individual
researchers
support the
exploitation of
research as $ $

4
The price of
textbooks is
simply immoral
and an
injustice
Source credit: https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/education/rowan-u-college-affordability-
initiative-takes-aim-at-textbooks/article_5e70c4ec-7d75-5be6-b131-322a9faf984e.html

Source credit: https://time.com/5383389/google-history-search-information/
5
Search engines
are monetized,
biased and
knowledge is sold
to the highest
bidder

Source credit: https://www.enago.com/academy/publish-or-perish-consequences/
6
The
quantification
of research as
the most
important
indicator of
quality/value

Source credit: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/university-staff-breaking-point-counselling-demand-
soars

Source credit: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/05/29/decolonizing-scholarly-data-and-publishing-
infrastructures/
Where and how is scholarly knowledge
produced and circulated, and with what
effects? We must be wary of the over-
production and representation of work
from particular geographies, as well as
the relegation of other locales as sites
of data collection
7

Source credit: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/05/29/decolonizing-scholarly-data-and-publishing-
infrastructures/

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tobifirestone/12270783585
Scholarship can no longer afford not to
be open and not to be public*
* Terms and Conditions apply

* Terms and Conditions apply
Doing and living scholarship in the open,
digital and public comes with its own
rules, role-players, gatekeepers,
harassment, dangers and none of the
issues surrounding race, gender, biases,
stereotypes disappear. On the contrary,
these may become more pronounced,
fluid, and unaccountable…
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

“If we follow
probability there
is no hope, just a
calculated
anticipation
authorized by
the world as it
is.”
(Stengers, I., & Zournazi, M.
(2002). A ‘cosmo-politics’–risk,
hope, change. Hope: New
philosophies for change, 245.)

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
Towards a scholarship
of refusal
“To refuse is to say no. But,
no, it is not just that. To
refuse can be generative
and strategic, a deliberate
move toward one thing,
belief, practice, or community
and away from another”
McGranahan, C. (2016). Theorizing refusal: An
introduction. Cultural Anthropology, 31(3),
319

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton
University Press, 3175 Princeton Pike, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648.
Boyer (1990) defined
scholarship as…
• Teaching
• Discovery
• Application
• Integration
How have these changed
in the digital, hyper-
connected but still
unequal era?

Scholarship is...
…not an esoteric appendage; it is at the heart
of what the profession is all about. All faculty,
throughout their careers, should themselves,
remain students. As scholars they must
continue to learn and be seriously and
continuously engaged in the expanding
intellectual world (1990, p. 36).

Boyer, E. L. (1991). The scholarship of teaching from: Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities
of the professoriate. College Teaching, 39(1), 11-13.

 The scholarship of research (discovery) – focused on
the creation of new knowledge
 The scholarship of integration – assembling existing
knowledge into broader themes or patterns, often
cross-disciplinary
 The scholarship of application where the research
or disciplinary knowledge is applied to societal or
practical problems
 The scholarship of teaching – sharing knowledge
and understandings of the world with new
generations, new contexts

Herman, E., & Nicholas, D.
(2019). Scholarly reputation
building in the digital age: An
activity-specific approach.
Review article. El profesional
de la información (EPI), 28(1).
Retrieved from
http://www.elprofesionaldelai
nformacion.com/contenidos/2
019/ene/02.html
Scholarly reputation building in the digital age: An activity-
specific approach. Review article
(Herman & Nicholas, 2019)

1.Scholarship of research (discovery)
What it is and how it changed
“to be a scholar is to be a researcher.”
(Boyer, 1990, p. 2)
recognised as…
‘Scholar’ as
identity
Measurement Recognition

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/wonder-woman-superman-superhero-552109/
“The quest
for reputation
is literally
‘built into’
research”
(Herman, E., & Nicholas, D.
(2019). Scholarly reputation
building in the digital age: An
activity-specific approach.
Review article. El profesional de
la información (EPI), 28(1), p. 5).

Not all research are equal…
Not all researchers are equal
Image by MasterTux from Pixabay
Not all journals/formats are equal

Imageby3DAnimationProductionCompanyfromPixabay
Paramount to your
reputation as
researcher is
obtaining
external funding
… and the better your reputation, the better your
chances of obtaining funding…

The doxa of ‘publish-or-perish’ is joined by
the ‘get-grants-or-perish’ ideology
(Herman & Nichols, 2019, p. 6).
Image by Rob van der Meijden from Pixabay

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/tree-root-moss-overgrown-green-2266626/
Ecologies of sharing, reputation
and power
Overlay image credit: http://site.sharespot.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/conectados-redes-sociais.png
… networks are the
lifeblood for the
dissemination of
research findings.
Making data sets
open and public…

Image credit: http://thesociologicalcinema.tumblr.com/post/142531355075/youre-playing-
monopoly-one-player-is-given-all
“a very elaborate prestige economy”
(Herman & Nicholas, 2019, p. 2)

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143601516@N03/28011015990
“…the dividing lines
between formal/informal
dissemination of
scholarly work have
crumbled’
(Herman & Nichols, 2019) p. 8).
“Rather than challenging the status of the formal
scholarly publication, new social network sites seem
to reinforce its importance by adding yet another
indicator”
Kjellberg, S., & Haider, J. (2019). Researchers’ online visibility: Tensions of visibility, trust
and reputation. Online information review, 43(3), 437.

Image by Thomas Wolter from Pixabay
Measuring outputs – number, quality and …
reputation

Source credit: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Higher-Ed-s-Real/243867

Academic disciplines in our time have
been subjected to the principle that more
productivity is better, and a lot more is
better than better, giving rise to a kind of
productivity syndrome.
Quantity is so much easier to evaluate.
Professor X has 18 articles, 12 book
reviews, 21 conference presentations, two
monographs, and an edited volume. The
university’s T&P committee is going to be
impressed. End of story.

“Academic culture — like American culture
more broadly — has become
monomaniacally infatuated with
productivity as the marker of a successful
life, and quantitative measures have
become central to determining what
counts as success. Although academics can
be found resisting (mildly) the metrics of
productivity foisted on them by
administrators, they also enthusiastically
measure themselves.”

Source credit: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Feeling-Anxious-You-re-Not/243117

“Academic labor and performance anxiety”: where the “shame
[of not performing] becomes a central tenet of everyday
academic life” (Richard Hall, 2014a, par. 2)
Academics “overwork because the current culture in
universities is brutally and deliberately invested in shaming
those who don’t compete effectively…” in stark contrast with
the heroic few who do, somehow, meet the shifting goalposts
(Kate Bowles, 2014, par. 7-8)
Image credits: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloff
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superman_S_symbol.svg
You are
either /or

Source credit: https://www.amazon.com/Metric-Power-David-Beer-
ebook/dp/B01JE3SI20/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526806112&sr=8-1&keywords=metric+power+beer
“…we are created and recreated by
metrics; we live through them, with
them, and within them. Metrics
facilitate the making and remaking
of judgements about us, the
judgements we make of ourselves
and the consequences of those
judgements as they are felt and
experienced in our lives. We play
with metrics and we are more often
played by them”
(Beer, 2016, p. 3).

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/urban-urbex-lostplace-abandoned-628269/
When numbers are used alone, “when the world is
reduced to numbers, a measure, to what is calculable
and laid before us; when humans are summed,
aggregated and accounted for; then much remains
forgotten, unsaid, concealed”
(Elden, 2006, in Beer, 2016, pp. 59-60).

The “I-am-a-scholar” is found, not intrinsically in who
I am and my curiosity and questions, but in what can
be measured, and recognised.
If “I” am not “enough”, what am I?

2. Scholarship of
integration
Mapping newly found knowledge into existing and
different intellectual contexts and traditions.

Crossing disciplinary
boundaries ‘comes at a
price’
Rhoten, D., & Parker, A. (2004). Risks and rewards
of an interdisciplinary research path. Science,
306(5704), 2046.
Working in/on cross-disciplinary
projects may also have a
“production penalty”
Herman, E., & Nicholas, D. (2019). Scholarly reputation
building in the digital age: An activity-specific approach.
Review article. El profesional de la información
(EPI), 28(1), p. 12

A digital scholarship
of integration

3. Scholarship of application
“useful
research”
as
determined
by the
dominant
ideologies
of the day
Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

4. Scholarship of teaching
Excellence in research “attracts prestige,
but excellence in teaching does not”
(Herman & Nichols, 2019, p. 14).

Taking teaching into the open, digital
and public
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Share reading lists and curricula
• Free downloadable textbooks and additional
resources
• Creative Commons – share, share, share
• Share images, diagrams
• Be an audience
• Open up curriculum development to the communities
we serve

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton
University Press, 3175 Princeton Pike, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648.
Boyer (1990) defined
scholarship as…
• Teaching
• Discovery
• Application
• Integration

ALT-C 2011 Conference Proceedings
Revisiting the scholarship of discovery, integration,
application and teaching in the light of social media,
digital tools, open learning and network effects.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
“…the notion of a linear process of knowledge
creation with knowledge discovery as the role of
researcher and knowledge transmission as the role
of the teacher, as separate scholarly practices, has
been replaced by a more fluid and dynamic process
which we are only just beginning to understand”
Garnett, F., & Ecclesfield, N. (2011). Towards a framework for co-creating open scholarship. Research in Learning
Technology, 19. Retrieved from https://journal.alt.ac.uk/index.php/rlt/article/view/724/936
5. Scholarship of Co-creation:
Participating in the perpetual Beta of
knowledge creation

Refusal is generative.
Refusal might be
thought of as a
stoppage, an end to
something, the
breaking of relations.
And it might be just
this. However, the
ending of one thing is
often the generation
of something new.
(McGranahan, 2016, p. 320).
1
Image by aKs_phOtOs from Pixabay

Refusal is social and affiliative2
Digital scholarship as the “undercommons” –
where we reject “the university as a cog in the
neoliberal order” and create the
“undercommons” that functions as “fugitive
spaces” where scholars and students can be in the
university but not of the university.
Kelley, R.D. (2016, March 7). Black study, Black struggle. The Boston Review. Retrieved
from http://bostonreview.net/forum/robin-d-g-kelley-black-study-black-struggle
Image by Pixaline from Pixabay

Refusal is not another word for
resistance … refusal is a critique, it is
the revenge of consent. Refusal as
revenge, then, rejects external state
and institutional structures. Refusal
rejects hierarchical relationships,
repositions relationships as one
configured al-together differently.
3

Refusal is hopeful, refusal is willful.
Refusal is insistence on the possible over
the probable, and […], is aligned with
hope.
Image by Arijit Chakraborty from Pixabay
4

THANK YOU
Paul Prinsloo
Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)
Department of Business Management
Samuel Pauw Building, Office 5-21, P.O. Box 392
Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa
T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)
prinsp@unisa.ac.za
Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog:
http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp

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