OpenCon 2016 Toronto

Narratives about the benefits of Open Access to scholarship have disproportionately focused on the citation advantage to authors, career advancement, and the visibility they bring to their institutions. Much less emphasis, however, has been placed on the roles Open Access could play in advancing the mission of universities in terms of their commitment to social justice, equity, and knowledge in service of the public good. In part this is due to the continual fixation with traditional metrics of research impact and the narrow framing of what constitutes scholarship, and in part this is due to the lack of alternative narratives and means to frame the social return and impact on opening research to the broader communities. This talk lays out the rationale for why we do not need more “alternative” metrics, but to think about alternatives to metrics all together. At the same time, we need to move towards conceptual framework and principles that better align with Boyer’s idea of the “scholarship of engagement” and how they help to promote integration of research, teaching and public outreach through Open Access.