The recording and the slides from today’s webinar entitled Open Access in the global South: Perspectives from the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network are now available on Zenodo. Prof. Leslie Chan shared key lessons from OCSDNet which is a research network with scientists, development practitioners, community members and activists from 26 countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Based on OCS experience, he questioned openness and public good, discussed open science definition beyond academy. Prof Chan also highlighted that principles as in the definition of Next Generation Repository should be guiding the technology and the infrastructures, not the other way around.
— Webinar recording and the slides —
As with science in general, the discussion around open access has generally been driven by the institutions and perspectives of western or global North countries. However, approaches to open access are far more diverse and there are alternative approaches that have not gained visibility, especially in historically marginalized communities. This presentation will present some key lessons of the OCSDNet http://ocsdnet.org. The OCSDNet is a research network that engaged in participatory research and consultation with scientists, development practitioners, community members and activists from 26 countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia to understand the values at the core of open science in development. What we learned is that there is not one right way to do open science, and “openness” requires constant negotiation and reflection, and the process will always differ by context due to historical and socio-political factors. The set of seven values and principles at the core of the OCSDNet manifesto will be discussed for a more inclusive open science in development. More important, we will discuss the implications of these values in relation to the aspirations and features of COAR’s Next Generation Repository.
About Speaker
Leslie Chan is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media and the Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
An early practitioner of the Web for scholarly exchange and online learning, Leslie is particularly interested in the role of “openness” in the design of network, and the implications on the production and flow of knowledge and their impact on local and international development.
As one of the original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, Leslie has been active in the experimentation and implementation of scholarly communication initiatives of varying scales around the world. The Director of Bioline International, Chair of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, Leslie is a long time advocate for knowledge equity and inclusive development. Leslie has served as advisor to numerous projects and organizations, including the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, the American Anthropological Association, the International Development Research Centre, UNESCO, and the Open Society Foundation, the Directory of Open Access Journal, and the Open Library of Humanities. He was the principal researcher for the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (2014-2017), funded by IDRC in Canada and DFID in the UK. Leslie is also a member of the COAR Next Generation Repository Working Group, and he is the co-chair of the upcoming ELPUB meeting in Toronto, focusing on Sustainable Community Based Knowledge Infrastructure http://elpub.net
