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This guide explores the intersection of the Open Access (OA) Movement and Information Justice.

Open Access and Information Justice

Open Access and Information Justice

Definitions

"Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access is the needed modern update for the communication of research that fully utilizes the Internet for what it was originally built to do—accelerate research."

- SPARC: https://sparcopen.org/open-access/

"Information inequalities are disparities related to the structure, accessibility and output of our information ecosystem, and they are wide-ranging and interconnected. 

Examples of information inequalities include the digital divide — a persistent phenomenon involving disparities in internet access and associated training/skills that can fall along racial, economic or geographic lines; news deserts — which research has shown are, in part, a function of the racial and economic characteristics of individual communities; disinformation divides — in which communities of color and foreign language communities are disproportionately targeted with election and health-related disinformation; the public discourse divide — in which people of color are less able to participate in public policy debates within and across communities because of limited access to information; news production divides — in which news producers tailor outputs to appeal to a predominately white and affluent audience; and biases in algorithmic and AI systems — which include gaps and biases in the underlying data reinforce existing institutional biases."

- Information Inequalities and Public Policy (2024-2025), Duke University - Bass Connections

https://bassconnections.duke.edu/project-teams/information-inequalities-and-public-policy-2024-2025

"Information privilege is the idea that access to information can be based on an individual’s status, affiliation, or power. Access to information can be blocked by various means including geography, access to technology, financial standing, and identity. The type of information that is obstructed is often the most skilled, researched, and credible. This creates a power dynamic where there are parts of a society who can benefit from this access and those who are marginalized because of a lack of access"

-("Information Privilege", Wikipedia)

 

  • Harrington, C. & Scott, R. E., (2023) “Intersections of Open Access and Information Privilege in Higher Education and Beyond”, NASIG Proceedings 37. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/nasig.4302
    • "Although OA opens up content for readers worldwide, it nonetheless poses challenges to authors in a variety of contexts, especially those in low-income countries. The realities of commercial publishing have diminished the opportunities to create a truly level playing field for all authors, irrespective of affiliation, and instead have reinforced the privilege of holding a tenured position at a research-intensive university with robust funding for research and related resources. Anthony J. Olejniczak and Molly J. Wilson found that “in general, the likelihood for a scholar to author an APC OA article increases with male gender, employment at a prestigious institution (AAU member universities), association with a STEM discipline, greater federal research funding, and more advanced career stage.”9 Tony Ross-Hellauer similarly acknowledged several of the layers of privilege that allow authors with job security and access to resources to publish OA, including a tenured position, noting: “the fact that career-advancement criteria don’t reward open practices puts early-career adherents at a disadvantage.”10​​​​​​​

"Informational justice is an ethical framework focusing on equitable access to data and information with attention to user interplay. It provides a foundation for guiding information policies and delivery systems. While there are multiple definitions of informational justice, a broadly useful frame for informational justice focuses on equitable inclusion of people, groups, and communities as they themselves are sources of information, and they actively contribute to, seek, process, and analyze information."

- Johnson, J.A. From open data to information justice. Ethics Inf Technol 16, 263–274 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-014-9351-8