The bidt and the TU Wien are cooperation partners for the DIGHUM lecture series – regular online events that discuss the different aspects of Digital Humanism.
Speaker: Stefan Klein, University of Münster
Moderator: Anna Bon, VU Amsterdam
Over the past 30 years, the leading academic publishers (often referred to as the “Big Five” – Elsevier, SpringerNature; Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Sage) have morphed from publishers of scholarly manuscripts into research infrastructure and information analytics businesses, combining monopolistic publishing strategies with AI-enabled transformation of research supported by opaque systems of data extraction and surveillance. In this talk I will focus on Elsevier as prominent and highly complex example for the increasing corporate control and shaping of academic knowledge production.
The analysis will construct a strategic trajectory of Elsevier’s waves of digital transformations as evolutionary technography. The results will be discussed using the lens of techno-colonization, an interpretative pattern to illustrate how publishers redesigned the scholarly communication ecosystem driven by an ideology of datafication and high performance institutions in a competitive environment. They not only took ownership and control over journals, rankings, and research infrastructures, but extended these into tools and professional services for university administrations, governments and industry.
The broad consensus that academic publishers’ techno-colonization is dangerous and inacceptable poses the riddle why the academic community so far has shown little resistance, instead engaged in Faustian bargains, collaboration and “voluntary servitude” (La Boétie).
About the Series
A roughly bi-weekly seminar offers presentations and panels from worldwide thought leaders. It is typically held on Tuesday afternoons at 17:00 CET.
The bidt and the TU Wien are cooperation partners for the DIGHUM lecture series.
Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationship between man and machine. It acknowledges the potential of Informatics and IT. At the same time, it points to related apparent threats such as privacy violations, ethical concerns with AI, automation, loss of jobs, and the ongoing monopolisation on the Web.
For this reason, a new initiative — DIGHUM lectures — started with regular online events to discuss the different aspects of Digital Humanism.
We will have one or more speakers on a specific topic followed by a discussion, or panel discussions, depending on the topic and speakers. The exact dates will be announced at least two weeks before.
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Archive and Resources of Lecture Series