[GOAL] Scholars at risk Re: SpringerOpen, Egypt and academic freedom

[Heather Morrison]

Thank you, Victor.

Internationally, there is a network called Scholars at Risk that provides the kind of support Victor describes...

Information can be found here:
https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/

The University of Ottawa is involved and has hosted scholars at risk.

Direct sponsorship of open access by a government that actively directs research is not necessarily problematic, i.e. most of this research is likely valid and should be published. However, there are two major potential problems arising from government interference with scholarly research.

Government control of research is an example of control by a party that may benefit or be harmed by the results. This is a conflict of interest. An example of a similar situation from pharma:  if the pharmaceutical industry has control over pharma research, side effects that could have a negative impact on drug approval can be downplayed or omitted. Similarly, a government that actively directs research can prohibit publication of facts that could discourage investment in a country. This is what as known colloquially as a "fox guards henhouse" scenario.

If readers are only aware of the works that a censoring government decides to permit, this in effect makes it possible for the government to give the world's academic community a false picture of the government and the country. To prevent this it appears to me that active attention to the matter of censorship and ensuring that critical perspectives are available appear to be necessary.

Both of these problems are major ones for understanding the world we live in, and illustrate why academic freedom is needed for all of us, not just particular individual academics.

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: Radical Open Access <RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on behalf of Victor Venema <Victor.Venema at GRASSROOTS.IS>
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2019 5:25 PM
To: RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK <RADICALOPENACCESS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] SpringerOpen, Egypt and academic freedom

Attention : courriel externe | external email

Dear all,

ElHassan makes a good point about the propaganda value of the
initiative. Otherwise I am missing arguments why making it easier for
Egyptian researchers to publish in Open Access journals is a threat to
their freedom of research. Governments having physical access to the
researchers is the threat.

Germany has foundations that help scientists (as well as authors,
artists and journalists) under threat to take a sabbatical. I hope other
countries have similar schemes and that everyone has a watch out for
possibly threatened colleagues they know.

Under the Trump regime already many climate scientists have lost their
position. I try to provide some counter weight by spreading this
information on social media.

Are there other effective ways to support the freedom of research in
other countries?

Publishing under a Creative Commons Attribution license should be no
problem. The license gives others the right to spread the original. If
there is any risk from it being known who wrote article X, it would stem
from the original. No matter which license is used, the authors may opt
to use pseudonyms.

If I recall correctly papers have been retracted for authors not using
their real names. I wish all publishers would allow the use of
pseudonyms to support researchers under threat. Only if pseudonyms hide
a conflict of interest I see a problem. And maybe the ORCID system could
have an option where a researcher can later claim credit for articles
published under a pseudonym once the situation is saver again.

With best regards,
Victor Venema

--
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Victor Venema
Grassroots Journals
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