[GOAL] SpringerOpen, Egypt and academic freedom

Thu Aug 8 16:16:51 BST 2019

This may help to explain the problem:

DOAJ lists the journals published by SpringerOpen that are sponsored by the Government of Egypt. We have reason to believe that this government actively interferes with academic research and in particular suppresses critique.

This means that people who rely on DOAJ for research on matters pertaining to Egypt will be exposed to government approved research and no indication that critique is suppressed.

If we do not acknowledge and address this, we are in effect unwittingly collaborating with a repressive, censoring government.

DOAJ is not at fault. SpringerNature faces similar dilemmas to other commercial companies working in non-democratic countries. This is a difficult problem, but an important one and we can start by acknowledging that the problem exists.

Dr. Heather Morrison
________________________________
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org <goal-bounces at eprints.org> on behalf of Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
Sent: Thursday, August 8, 2019 10:26:00 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] SpringerOpen, Egypt and academic freedom

As a reminder, SpringerOpen publishes journals in partnership with the Government of Egypt, a government that represses and sometimes even kills its scholars. Should we boycott SpringerOpen?

My main point is that academic freedom is essential to open access. The OA movement has been around for more than two decades, I argue it is time for more nuanced discussion.

A white list of journals based on meeting technical requirements can mask much greater problems than it solves.

I do not have a quick fix to protect scholars who might be targeted, rather I raise this an important question for discussion and note that attribution, generally desirable in scholarship, can sometimes be problematic.

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa
Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
________________________________
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org <goal-bounces at eprints.org> on behalf of David Prosser <David.Prosser at rluk.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, August 8, 2019 9:26:34 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] SpringerOpen, Egypt and academic freedom

Attention : courriel externe | external email
Heather

You specifically raised CC-BY in this context.  Do you believe that a researcher making a piece of research public under CC-BY is potentially at more risk of harm than if they made it public under a different CC licence or even under full All Rights Reserved?

David

On 8 Aug 2019, at 14:07, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:

Reader caution: discussion of matters like attacks on academic freedom as found in this thread may upset some people. This is a response to David Prosser's comments.

Comment: I am sorry that David is not feeling well. If others feel sick about what is happening to academics in Egypt, I understand. That's how I feel about this, too.
There are many things that happen in the world that I find disturbing. My approach, with respect to events that intersect my areas of expertise, is to think about such events, ask questions and propose potential solutions to make the world a better place.  In this spirit, I repeat the specific question that David alludes to.

Question: is attribution necessarily desirable for scholars? This is part of the larger question of the relationship between academic freedom and open access. My argument is that academic freedom is essential to open access.

We live in a world where academics can be targeted for what they study or what they say about what they study. This doesn't only happen in countries like Egypt. Governments in North America have recently begun taking exception to climate change research. In Canada, under the former Conservative government, government scientists were muzzled. In the U.S., I have heard about a professor's watchlist targeting liberal professors. No academics have killed in North America that I know of, but otherwise there is some similarity with what is happening in Egypt today. This is important in the context of scholarly publishing because some of the latest technological developments appear to assume that matters such as attribution are neutral or beneficial.

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project
sustainingknowledgecommons.org<http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/>
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
________________________________
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf of David Prosser <David.Prosser at rluk.ac.uk<mailto:David.Prosser at rluk.ac.uk>>
Sent: Thursday, August 8, 2019 5:20:24 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
Cc: RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK<mailto:RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK> <RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK<mailto:RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] SpringerOpen, Egypt and academic freedom

Attention : courriel externe | external email
Dr Morrison’s arguments against the CC-BY licence are well known to readers of this list and I acknowledge her sincerely held, and consistent, views on this.

But I’m afraid that I find using the murder of students to further, however tangentially, that argument quite sickening.

David

On 7 Aug 2019, at 23:01, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:

SpringerOpen is currently publishing 13 journals sponsored by the Government of Egypt. This is an opportunity to discuss some issues of relevance to the goals and sustainability of open access, starting with academic freedom. As described by Holmes and Aziz (2019) there are very serious problems with academic freedom in Egypt, ranging from tight government control over what is studied and published to extrajudicial killings of 21 students in the last few years. The University of Liverpool considered, then rejected, a lucrative offer to set up a campus in Egypt due to concerns about reputational damage. This raises some interesting questions. Academic freedom is critical to any kind of meaningful open access. Nothing could possibly be more in opposite to open access than a dead student whose research was destroyed because of what was studied. Why is SpringerOpen partnering with the Government of Egypt? Should academics boycott SpringerOpen because of this partnership? What, if anything, can academics do to support academic freedom in a country like Egypt? Some believe that the Creative Commons license CC-BY (attribution only) is the best for open access (I don’t agree, but this is a separate topic). If your research could get you killed, attribution might not be a good idea. Today, some of us might assume that these kinds of problems would never happen in our own countries; but times change, and it has happened that places that enjoyed freedom at one point in time came under the control of a dictator.

Following is the list of titles which state on the SpringerOpen site that they are supported by the “Specialized Presidential Council for Education and Scientific Research (Government of Egypt), so author-payable article-processing charges do not apply”.

Journals supported by the Government of Egypt published by SpringerOpen as of July 2019
Ain Shams Journal of Anesthesiology
Bulletin of the National Research Centre
Egyptian Journal of Biological Pest Control
Egyptian Journal of Forensic Sciences
Egyptian Journal of Medical Human Genetics
Egyptian Journal of Neurosurgery
Egyptian Journal of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine
Egyptian Pediatric Association Gazette
Journal of the Egyptian Public Health Association
Middle East Current Psychiatry
The Cardiothoracic Surgeon
The Egyptian Heart Journal
The Egyptian Journal of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery

Holmes, A. & Aziz, A. (2019). Egypt’s lost academic freedom. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved August 9, 2019 fromhttps://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78210

This is the full text of the post - here is the link in case anyone would like to comment on the blog:

https://wordpress.com/post/sustainingknowledgecommons.org/3522

Dr. Heather Morrison
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa
Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project
sustainingknowledgecommons.org<http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/>
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
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