Janneke Adema

The Radical Open Access Collective: Community, Resilience, Collaboration

An Open Insights interview with Janneke Adema and Sam Moore

Reblogged from: https://www.openlibhums.org/news/278/

Interviewed by James Smith (OLH)

Janneke Adema and Sam Moore are the authors of a March 2018 UKSG Insights essay entitled Collectivity and collaboration: imagining new forms of communality to create resilience in scholar-led publishing. Today we explore the context behind the Radical Open Access Collective (ROAC), and their thoughts on the complexities of scholar-led open access publishing.

The ROAC is holding the Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of Care conference at Coventry University from 26-27 June 2018.

OLH: Hi Janneke and Sam, thanks for talking to us! To start, how would you summarise the core philosophy of the ROAC?

JA & SM: Thanks for the invitation! We feel that the core philosophy behind the collective is about returning control of publishing to the scholarly community. While the member presses do not represent a unified or homogeneous set of values or practices, they are each interested in practicing a vision of open access that is accountable to (and reflective of) their various communities. This affords experimentation, critique, collaboration and a range of other practices that traditional publishing currently prohibits to a lesser or greater extent. The collective ultimately hopes to offer a mutually supportive, non-hierarchical environment for exploring the futures of open publishing practices.

The collective ultimately hopes to offer a mutually supportive, non-hierarchical environment for exploring the futures of open publishing practices.

Taking this into consideration, some keywords that come to mind with respect to the ROAC’s philosophy are: collaboration, non-competitive, not-for-profit, horizontal (non-hierarchical), scholar-led, ethics of care, diversity, community, experimenting, global justice, affirmative creative critique, performative, progressive, radical, mutually-supportive, mutual reliance, multi-polar, resilience, communality, inclusivity.

OLH: What ethical principles does the ROAC seek to normalise, and what challenges does it face in doing so?

JA & SM: We are not sure “normalise” is the right word here, given the implicit normativity this word brings with it. Ethics, many of us feel, is not something that can be defined in advance or that can be predetermined, we cannot resort to moral criteria or predefined values or truths when it comes to publishing, scholarly communication or openness, for example. A responsible ethical approach to openness, to publishing, to the book, would not presume to know what these are, nore what ethics is, in advance. If anything we feel ethics is, or should be, non-normative: its meaning cannot be predetermined. We also do not follow any set “principles” in this respect; however, our ethics is not relativistic either; instead it responds to specific singular practices and situations, around how openness is implemented and the materiality of the book changes, for example. Our ethics are therefore performative, they arise out of the way we (as scholars, publishers) become with the media we publish.

OLH: Why is being radical a good thing?

JA & SM: Being radical is neither good nor bad, it is a terminology we have adapted to distinguish the specific version of open access we want to promote from more neoliberal or top-down versions, for example. The etymology of “radical” shows it derives from the Latin radix, for root, where it means going back to the origin, to what is essential. For us, radical open access simply represents what we always perceived open access to be, it is a way for us to position ourselves within the wide diversity of meanings open access represents and conjures up.

The etymology of “radical” shows it derives from the Latin radix, for root, where it means going back to the origin, to what is essential.

Being radical does however offer us the chance to present an affirmative counterpoint to the dominant discourses around open access, particularly those promoted by commercial publishers and governmental funders—such as HEFCE and RCUK (now UKRI) in the UK—who tend to be interested in OA inasmuch as it promotes business, transparency, and innovation or merely protects the interests of commercial publishers (see the Finch report, for example). This is how the average humanities and social sciences researcher is likely to encounter OA—as merely representative of a neoliberal ideology and a top down instrumental requirement—and so the ROAC seeks to illustrate that there is an alternative and that OA can have a basis in something both emancipatory and transformative.

OLH: The ROAC is an advocacy group, but it is also a community-builder. How does a strong community translate into a response to the pressing issues of open access?

JA & SM: Because it offers us the opportunity to scale-up or as we have previously argued, to “scale small”—keeping the diversity and independence of the (often small-scale) endeavours of our members intact—both horizontally and vertically. By harnessing the strengths and organizational structures of not-for-profit, independent and scholar-led publishing communities we hope to further facilitate collective efforts through community building and by setting up horizontal alliances. Next to that we hope to enable vertical forms of collaboration with other organisations, collectives, institutions and agencies within scholarly publishing, for example libraries and universities, but also with collectives of artists, technologists and activists. As we have argued elsewhere, we want to explore how we can set up so-called “chains of equivalence” (Laclau) with other movements and struggles that are also dealing with aspects of openness – not just those associated with open knowledge, open science, open data, altmetrics and so on, but also those areas in the Arts and Humanities that conceive digital media more explicitly in terms of power, conflict and violence. Those associated with critical media theory, p2p networks and shadow libraries, for example. We are interested in exploring a plurality of open movements, theories and philosophies in this respect, which may at times conflict and contradict one another, but which can nevertheless contribute to the construction of a common, oppositional horizon.

By harnessing the strengths and organizational structures of not-for-profit, independent and scholar-led publishing communities we hope to further facilitate collective efforts through community building and by setting up horizontal alliances.

In this respect the ROAC also intends to present a unified voice in response to certain issues of advocacy and policy. Having a strong community allows us to discuss and respond to various issues around publishing and openness, around how open access is being implemented for example, highlighting why funders should take alternative, scholar-led publishing initiatives seriously as part of this discussion. Think for example of the recently announced intention of the UKRI in the UK to have a mandatory OA monograph component to the REF after the next. This could present a threat by commercialising and formalising a particularly kind of OA monograph practice in the same way that the current REF policy has done for journal articles (including for example the adaptation of (high) BPCs for monographs, which are unsustainable), which is to say, in accordance with the wishes of commercial publishers. This has already summoned conservative reactions from organisations such as the Royal Historical Society, positioning themselves against this development. Yet, such funder requirement for OA books could also potentially present an opportunity for many presses within the ROAC who already publish OA monographs (such as ROAC members punctum books, Open Book Publishers, and Mattering Press, for example) as well as for scholars looking for options to publish their books in OA without (excessive) BPCs. Making both funders and scholars aware of the existence of these scholar-led models for publishing open access books is of the highest importance here. This is where we would see the ROAC coming in.

OLH: How do you imagine the role of radical experimentation as a tool for humanities open access?

JA & SM: Many of the ROAC member presses would understand the relationship the other way round, that openness affords experimentation and is the reason many OA projects adopt an open approach to begin with. This means that openness is often foundational to radical projects, a natural way of working that permits different kinds of experimentation in certain contexts. Openness is thus not about being more open, for instance, but is rather about being open to change and experimentation—depending on the contingent circumstances, the political and ethical decisions and cuts that need to be made, and so on.

… [B]y experimenting in an open way with the idea and the concept of the book, but also with the materiality and the system of material production surrounding it—which includes our ideas of the material and materiality—we can ask important questions concerning authorship, the fixity of the text, quality, authority and responsibility; issues that lie at the basis of what scholarship is and what the functions of the university should be.

This is why, in foregrounding experimentation, the ROAC reflects a range of practices and ideologies, rather than a single, coherent movement for making research freely available. Experimentation in this respect can be seen as a form of ongoing critique, serving as a means to re-perform our existing institutions and scholarly practices in a more ethical and responsible way. Experimentation thus stands at the basis of a rethinking of scholarly communication and the university in general, and can even potentially be seen as a means to rethink politics itself too. For instance, by experimenting in an open way with the idea and the concept of the book, but also with the materiality and the system of material production surrounding it—which includes our ideas of the material and materiality—we can ask important questions concerning authorship, the fixity of the text, quality, authority and responsibility; issues that lie at the basis of what scholarship is and what the functions of the university should be.

OLH: How does a radical approach to open access empower researchers in the Global South, and those outside of traditional institutional frameworks?

JA & SM: We would rather emphasise the opposite: it is researchers in the Global South and those outside or on the fringes of institutions (so-called para-academics) that empower the open access movement and scholarly publishing more in general. Dominique Babini has for example stressed that “the international community would do well to follow the examples of initiatives in Latin America, where open access is already the norm and where costs are shared among members of scholarly communities to ensure lasting impact”. In Latin America, Babini points out, the cost of publishing has always been an integral part of the cost of research, where it is universities and academic societies, not commercial publishers that predominantly publish journals and books. There is also the example of sustainable publishing platforms and models developed here, based on cost sharing, in opposition to the commercial enclosures APCs impose for example. Think of portals such as SciELO and Redalyc, but also the organisation (and ROAC member) Babini represents,CLACSO, which brings together hundreds of research centres and graduate schools in the social sciences and humanities, predominantly in Latin American countries.

… [I]t is researchers in the Global South and those outside or on the fringes of institutions (so-called para-academics) that empower the open access movement and scholarly publishing more in general.

From the perspective of being outside of established structures, we also need to acknowledge the essential role shadow libraries and guerrilla open access play in providing access to research in a global context, where for example LibGen and Sci-Hub have achieved with relative ease what the open access movement has for decades been striving for: quick and easy and near universal access to the results of scholarly research.

OLH: Open source tools and open access publishing are intertwined. What needs to be free and open for smaller initiatives to thrive?

JA & SM: If possible the entire production process (open that is, nothing is free), although we appreciate we will always be implicated in commercial, profit-driven, proprietary structures, platforms and models to some extent. It is about making strategic choices on the basis of what we, or better said, the ROAC’s members, think is important. Sometimes this means using proprietary software, sometimes it includes publishing in a closed way. There are no pre-set answers or guidelines here, although there are now many open-source options for scholar-publishers to choose from. Future work of the ROAC will be, based on the information portal we have already set up, to further collate many of these options and to develop a toolkit of advice so that other communities can start their own publishing projects too.

In many ways we’re heading in the wrong direction with increased control of the means of production by large corporate entities.

That said, the current push for centrally-controlled walled gardens, such as those being developed by Elsevier (see e.g. this article by Posada and Chen) and Springer-Nature, is very disturbing. Publishers now seek to lock users into their ecosystems, monetising not just user intellectual property but their interaction data too. In many ways we’re heading in the wrong direction with increased control of the means of production by large corporate entities. A perhaps missed opportunity to counteract this is the recent tender call for the European Commission Open Research Publishing Platformthat does not specifically require open infrastructure to protect against corporate capture.

Nonetheless, instead of centralised and one-size-fits all publishing platforms, we would like to emphasise the value of decentralised ecosystems of small open source publishing projects, where platforms are often based on implementing a specific model or solution aimed to solve the crisis in academic publishing. This kind of imposed uniformity could lead to a loss of control of certain aspects of the publishing process and threaten the independence and individuality of small experimental projects. This is why the ROAC intends to complement library-based and university press publishing projects that share a more decentralised vision, and urges funders to support a biodiversity of publishing projects and models.

OLH: What are your views on volunteerist labour in publishing? Is this something for which people should always be paid or is unpaid publishing work acceptable?

JA & SM: Our feeling is that academic publishing is already sustained by (and couldn’t exist without) large amounts of volunteer labour contributed by academic editors, reviewers, copyeditors and interns. Presses in the ROAC simply divert some of this labour from commercial publishing (and encourages other academics to do the same) towards something more transformative, that is truly in the communities interest as well as community-owned and controlled. Yet labour is not a zero-sum game and will be always be a site of struggle between individual commitments as part of the traditional publishing industry, due to the prestige this confers, and collective commitments to transforming this system through experimentation into alternatives. Ultimately we want to make the appeal that publishing should be valued as both an integral aspect of research and something for which scholars should be paid as part of their academic positions.

Ultimately we want to make the appeal that publishing should be valued as both an integral aspect of research and something for which scholars should be paid as part of their academic positions.

That said, many of our initiatives are currently committed to paying their designers, typesetters and proofreaders, interns, or other people they do work with, fairly (whilst they often don’t receive a wage themselves). On the other hand, members of the ROAC have also been critical of applying a market logic or a logic of calculation to all the relationships within research and communication. There are different ways than mere monetary ones in which we can recognise the contributions of the various agencies involved in the publishing process.

The ROAC also aims to decrease the amount of volunteer labour in publishing to some extent by enabling scholar-led and not-for-profit projects to work closer together and to encourage them to, as a community, share amongst themselves, tools, best practices and information that might aid with working more efficiently, including information on how to obtain funds and grants to subsidise publishing projects. To encourage this, we have set up the Radical Open Access mailing list, which we use to discuss issues around the politics and ethics of publishing, and to share best practices and strategies amongst each other.

OLH: Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Janneke and Sam!

Join us again soon for more #EmpowOA Open Insights.

Janneke Adema

Registration for Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of Care now open

Radical Open Access II – The Ethics of Care

Two days of critical discussion about creating a more diverse and equitable future for open access

The Post Office
Coventry University
June 26-27 2018 

Organised by Coventry University’s postdigital arts and humanities research studio The Post Office, a project of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures

Find out more at: http://radicaloa.co.uk/conferences/roa2/

Attendance and participation is free of charge but registration is mandatory. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/radical-open-access-ii-the-ethics-of-care-tickets-44796943865

Co-curators: Culture Machine, Mattering Press, Memory of the World/Public Library, meson press, Open Humanities Press, punctum books, POP

Speakers: Denisse Albornoz, Janneke Adema, Laurie Allen, Angel Octavio Alvarez Solís, Bodó Balázs, Kirsten Bell, George Chen, Jill Claassen, Joe Deville, Maddalena Fragnito, Valeria Graziano, Eileen Joy, Chris Kelty, Christopher Long, Kaja Marczewska, Frances McDonald, Gabriela Méndez-Cota, Samuel Moore, Tahani Nadim, Christopher Newfield, Sebastian Nordhoff, Lena Nyahodza, Alejandro Posada, Reggie Raju, Václav Štětka, Whitney Trettien

Radical Open Access II is about developing an ethics of care. Care with regard to:

  • our means of creating, publishing and communicating research;
  • our working conditions;
  • our relations with others.

Radical Open Access II aims to move the debate over open access on from two issues in particular:

THE QUESTION OF ACCESS. At first sight it may seem rather odd for a conference on open access to want to move on from this question. But as Sci-Hub, aaaarg, libgen et al. show, the debate over access has largely been won by shadow-libraries, who are providing quick and easy access to vast amounts of published research. Too much of the debate over ‘legitimate’ forms of open access now seems to be about how to use the provision of access to research as a means of exercising forms of governmental and commercial control (via audits, metrics, discourses of transparency and so on).

THE OA MOVEMENT’S RELUCTANCE TO ENGAGE RIGOROUSLY WITH THE KIND OF CONCERNS THAT ARE BEING DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE IN SOCIETY. This includes climate change, the environment, and the damage that humans are doing to the planet (i.e. the Anthropocene). But it also takes in debates over different forms:

  • of organising labour (e.g. platform cooperativism);
  • of working – such as those associated with ideas of post-work, the sharing and gig economies, and Universal Basic Income;
  • of being together – see the rise of interest in the Commons, and in experiments with horizontalist, leaderless ways of self-organizing such as those associated with the Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the Dakota Standing Rock Sioux protests.

Background

In 2015 the inaugural international Radical Open Access Conference addressed an urgent question: how should we set about reclaiming open access from its corporate take-over, evident not least in the rise of A/BPC models based on the charging of exorbitant, unaffordable and unsustainable publishing fees from scholars and their institutions? The conference saw participants calling for the creation of new forms of communality, designed to support the building of commons-based open access publishing infrastructures, and promote a more diverse, not-for-profit eco-system of scholarly communication. With these calls in mind, the Radical Open Access Collective (ROAC) was formed immediately following the 2015 conference as a horizontal alliance between like-minded groups dedicated to the sharing of skills, tools and expertise. Since then it has grown to a community of over 40 scholar-led, not-for-profit presses, journals and other projects. The members of this alliance are all invested in reimaging publishing. And what’s more, are committed to doing so in a context where debates over access—which in many respects have been resolved by the emergence of shadow libraries such as Sci-Hub—are increasingly giving way to concerns over the commercial hegemony of academic publishing. So much so that the issue addressed by the 2015 conference—how can open access be taken back from its corporate take-over? —now seems more urgent than ever.

In June 2018, Coventry University’s postdigital arts and humanities research studio, The Post Office, will convene a second Radical Open Access conference, examining the ways in which open access is being rendered further complicit with neoliberalism’s audit culture of evaluation, measurement, impact and accountability. Witness the way open access has become a top-down requirement – quite literally a ‘mandate’ – rather than a bottom-up scholar-led movement for change. Taking as its theme The Ethics of Care, the concern of this second conference will be on moving away from those market-driven incentives that are frequently used to justify open access, to focus instead on the values that underpin many of the radical open access community’s experiments in open publishing and scholarly communication. In particular, it will follow the lead of Mattering Press, a founding member of the ROAC, in exploring how an ethics of care can help to counter the calculative logic that otherwise permeates academic publishing.

What would a commitment to more ethical forms of publishing look like? Would such an ethics of care highlight the importance of:

  • Making publishing more diverse and equitable – geographically, but also with respect to issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality?
  • Nurturing new and historically under-represented cultures of knowledge – those associated with early career, precariously employed and para-academics, or located outside the global North and West?
  • Ensuring everyone is able to have a voice – not least those writing on niche or avant-garde topics or who are conducting hybrid, multimodal, post-literary forms of research, and who are currently underserved by our profit-focused commercial publishing system?

Indeed, for many members of the ROAC, a commitment to ethics entails understanding publishing very much as a complex, multi-agential, relational practice, and thus recognising that we have a responsibility to all those involved in the publishing process. Caring for the relationships involved throughout this process is essential, from rewarding or otherwise acknowledging people fairly for their labour, wherever possible, to redirecting our volunteer efforts away from commercial profit-driven entities in favour of supporting more progressive not-for-profit forms of publishing. But it also includes taking care of the nonhuman: not just the published object itself, but all those animals, plants and minerals that help to make up the scholarly communication eco-system.

Radical Open Access II is community-driven, and is being co-organised and co-curated by various members of the ROAC in a collaborative manner. It includes panels on topics as diverse as: Predatory Publishing; The Geopolitics of Open; Competition and Cooperation; Humane Metrics/Metrics Noir; Guerrilla Open Access; The Poethics of Scholarship; and Care for the Commons. The conference is free to attend and will also be live streamed for those who are unable to be there in person.

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The Independent has recently reported that in autumn this year, the UN Human Rights Investigator Professor Philip Alston will be researching the impact of Tory austerity measures in Britain.[1] The need for such an investigation will come as no surprise … Continue reading →
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Out now: Disruption des Journalismus

The public interest in journalism seems greater today than ever. Keywords as ‘fake news’ or ‘clickbait’ indicate that we are dealing with a polarising political issue. Anyone who takes a closer look at today’s journalism knows we need to better understand the world in which we live. After all, journalists play a crucial role here, because traditionally they have a decisive role in how we perceive the world. But what has this role been like since the advent of the internet? What does it mean that there is both a new generation of readers as well as a new generation of journalists – called digital natives – born in the 1980s and raised with the internet in the 1990s? In the search for answers, this book outlines a multi-layered portrait of the internet generation, and above all shows us the far-reaching changes in the medium.

Download or order a copy here (in German).

Author
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Call for contribution: The social responsibility of organisations and companies in French-speaking Africa

Sahel landscape

A collective work project under done by the following researchers Victorine Ghislaine NZINO MUNONGO, researcher at the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation, Cameroon, Martial JEUGUE DOUNGUE, PhD, Researcher-Lecturer, L. Christelle BELPORO, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada and Hermann NANAN LEKOGMO, PhD, Catholic University of Central Africa (UCAC-APDHAC)

Publication date: December 2018
Call for contributions on Calenda : https://calenda.org/438721

Argument

Considering on the one hand, the current global village under construction in which many stakeholders are called to interact towards the realisation of a common destiny and, on the other hand, the concern for the preservation of local resources, the need for a more concrete implementation emerges from the principle of integration. The objectives of sustainable development (OSD) were thus adopted with the aim, by 2030, to eliminate poverty in all its forms through the promotion of sustainable industrialisation that benefits all, and promotes innovation and research and encourages large companies and transnational corporations to adopt and integrate viable practices. The essential aim of objectives is to create jobs, increase local wealth through gross domestic product (GDP) and more efficient use of resources through the use of clean, socially inclusive and environmentally friendly industrial technologies and processes.

The current economic environment in Sub-Saharan Africa faces several challenges:

  1. An estimated population explosion of 1.1 billion inhabitants with a projection of 2.4 billion in 2050 [1], which represents one third of the world’s population. In addition, 60 per cent of the African population is less than 35 years old [2] and is made up of young people eager for goods and consumption.
  2. An urbanisation that is done at a high speed in terms of the occupancy of space by populations: statistics mention 472 million inhabitants living in urban areas and double this figure within the next twenty-five years [3]. These figures indicate the existence of a significant gradual concentration of demand and supply of goods and services in urban areas and a growing economy with a forecast of 2.6% in 2017[4]. According to the World Bank, this growth is slowed-down by the infrastructure deficit, which has the effect of limiting companies’ productivity to 40% [5].
  3. A pretty glaring lack of infrastructure. There is therefore a vital need to invest massively for the construction of viable spaces that can accommodate this growing population and meet companies’ expectations. However, the bill for these operations will probably be quite salty. According to finance experts, the need for investment in infrastructure construction in Africa is estimated at 93 billion Dollars per year [6]. In an environment where 43 per cent of the whole population lives below the poverty line.[7], the challenge is not only to prepare the ground for a so-called inclusive economy but also a system of production, sales and consumption that respects the Human dignity while preserving the environment. Hence the reference to social responsibility of companies/organisations.

According to Bambara and his colleagues, the social responsibility of organisations (RSO) is perceived as the « responsibility of an organisation for the impact of its decisions and activities on the society and the environment, resulting in transparent and ethical behaviour that contributes to sustainable development including the health of people and the well-being of society, takes into account the expectations of stakeholders, respects the laws in force and is compatible with the standards and is integrated into the Organisation as a whole and implemented in its relations”[8]. Moreover, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the social responsibility of companies/organisations (CSR) expresses « … the way in which companies take into account the impact of their activities on society and affirm their principles and values both in the application of their internal methods and processes and in their relations with other actors”[9]. The ILO definition addresses the sociological approach of CSR, which presents this concept « … As a matter of social regulation involving, behind the institution of the enterprise, social actors in Conflict »[10]. Henceforth, as Mc William and Siegel would say, it is a matter of considering CSR « … as actions to improve social well-being beyond the interests of the firm and what is required by law ».[11]. This presentation of the concept sets out in a comprehensive way the issue of integrating a CSR/RSO into a company.

The legal-political framework of CSR/RSO in Africa is a real challenge. If the perception that the States have of this tool is full of nuances, companies also have the perception. The management and implementation tools for CSR/SAR in African countries and businesses deserve to be analysed in order to understand and translate the scope of CSR/RSO in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the innovative nature of the Western concept of CSR/RSO in Africa and the changing apprehension of the latter in terms of social realities, there are implementing approaches that position companies as actors with responsibility to contribute to the eradication of poverty.

The aim of this book is to address the responses offered by CSR/RSO in Sub-Saharan Africa under the prism of the various challenges that the latter faces. We want to better understand exchanges of influence existing between this concept and the Saharan African environment, in other words, analyse the contribution of CSR/RSO in the Saharan African environment and in return, changes undergone by this concept because of adaptation to its setting environment.

This book will address stakeholders such as public and parastatal administrations, the private sector, academic and professional institutions, civil society, etc.

The expected contributions must concern one of the following aspects:

  1. CSR/SAR and Sustainable Development Goals, by 2030 in Sub-Saharan Africa;
  2. CSR/SAR and poverty alleviation in Saharan countries;
  3. CSR/SAR in the forestry sector in Sub-Saharan Africa;
  4. Industrialisation, clean technology and economic growth in Saharan countries;
  5. Sustainable Industrialisation, research and innovation in Saharan countries;
  6. Major corporations, transnational corporations and human rights;
  7. Sustainable production policy in SMI/SME in Sub-Saharan Africa;
  8. Protection of means of substances and basic production in the face of environmental crises in Cameroon; etc.

The chapters will be assessed according to the open-ended method of ESBC (between authors of the book, with publication of a summary of the evaluations).

Book creation process

This book project is opened to all, in a state of mind that rejects any prospect of competition or exclusion. On the contrary, the aim of the cognitive justice of this book leads us to want to open it to all knowledge and to all epistemologies,

As much as it helps us to understand its purpose. We will therefore work with all authors who want to participate in this adventure to improve their proposal or their text so that this book becomes a valuable resource.

In terms of writing instructions, it is quite possible to include pictures or other images. It is also possible to propose, as a chapter, the transcription of an interview or a testimonial or a video for the online version, if it enables knowledge to enter our book. On the other hand, in order to maximize the accessibility and use of the book, we ask to restrict the use of any specialised jargon.

The circulation of this call in all African universities is crucial in order to respect the aim of cognitive justice and regional circulation of information.

Note that the writing of these chapters is voluntary and will not be remunerated. The gratification of authors will be to see their chapter spread and be used in the service of the common good of Africa.

Authors participating in the production of the book will be invited to exchange throughout the writing and editing process on a Facebook or WhatsApp group, in order to share ideas, references and early versions, in the spirit of mutual support and collaboration that is promoted by cognitive justice.

Calendar

  • March 2018: Call launch
  • July 31st  2018: Deadline to send a proposal (a summary of few sentences) or a chapter
  • August 31st 2018: Response to proposals and reception of chapters until October 31st 2018.
  • December 2018: Publication of a complete online version and print copies upon request.

To participate

As soon as possible, send a message to the following email address propositions@editionscienceetbiencommun.org with your biography (in few lines), the complete contact details of your institution or association and a summary of the chapter (or chapters) that you want to propose. This summary consists of presenting in few sentences the content of the text you wish to propose, associating it, as far as possible, with one of the proposed topics.

Notes

[1]Croissance démographique, http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/africa-department/priority-africa/operational-strategy/demographic-growth/. (Consulté le 11/08/2017).

[2] Idem.

[3]  Rapport sur l’urbanisation en Afrique : pour soutenir la croissance il faut améliorer la vie des habitants et des entreprises dans les villes, http://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/press-release/2017/02/09/world-bank-report-improving-conditions-for-people-and-businesses-in-africas-cities-is-key-to-growth. (Consulté le 15/08/2017).

Cf. Félix Zogning,Ahmadou Aly Mbaye,Marie-Thérèse Um-Ngouem, L’économie informelle, l’entrepreneuriat et l’emploi, Editions JFD, 2017 p.81.

[4] http://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/region/afr/overview. (Consulté le 11/08/2017).

[5] Le nécessaire développement des infrastructures pour une croissance plus inclusive en Afrique, https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/cercle-164856-le-necessaire-developpement-des-infrastructures-pour-une-croissance-plus-inclusive-en-afrique-2056658.php. (Consulté le 11/08/2017).

[6] Idem.

[7] Toujours plus de personnes pauvres en Afrique malgré les progrès réalisés en matière d’éducation et de santé, http://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/press-release/2015/10/16/africa-gains-in-health-education-but-numbers-of-poor-grow. (Consulté le 11/08/2017).

[8] M. BAMBARA et A. SENE, « L’évolution de la responsabilité sociétale de l’entreprise à la faveur du développement durable: vers une juridicisation de la RSE »  in Revue Africaine du Droit de l’Environnement, nᵒ 00, 2012, p.100.

[9]L’OIT et la responsabilité sociale de l’entreprise, Helpdesk du BIT N◦1,  http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_emp/—emp_ent/—multi/documents/publication/wcms_142693.pdf (consulté le 12/02/2015).

[10] Emmanuelle Champion et al., Les représentations de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises : un éclairage sociologique, Les cahiers de la Chaire de responsabilité sociale et développement durable ESG-UQÀM – collection recherche No 05-2005, p.4.

[11] MacWilliams, A. & Siegel, D., cité par Marianne Rubinstein, « Le développement de la responsabilité sociale de l’entreprise », Revue d’économie industrielle [En ligne], 113 | 1er trimestre 2006, mis en ligne le 21 avril 2008, consulté le 18 janvier 2015. URL :http://rei.revues.org/295.

INC

We are looking for an intern with a strong interest in digital publishing!

For the further development of its hybrid publication strategy – combining digital and print books and other media – the Institute of Network Cultures is looking for an

Intern with a strong interest in (digital) publishing


4-6 months, 4 days a week, starting September 3rd, 2018

You will work on international publications in the field of online media in different formats (print, PDF, EPUB). The internship offers both practical experience and a chance to conduct research in the field of hybrid publishing. A strong command of the English language in reading and writing is necessary, as most of the publications are in English. We are looking for someone with a keen interest or background in new media, writing & editing and/or the book industry. It is possible to do research for a thesis within this internship.

The Institute of Network Cultures (INC) is a media research center that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications, and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink as part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam). The institute acts as a framework sustaining several research projects, with a strong focus on publications. For more information see http://networkcultures.org/. For an overview of all INC publications go to http://networkcultures.org/publications. For previous work on this topic you could check out PublishingLab, which INC has previously collaborated closely with.

Internship duties include:


  • Researching digital publication methods and tools;
  • working with the hybrid publishing workflow;
  • assisting with the production of new titles, both print and electronic, including editing manuscripts.

The intern will be a part of a small team within a large institution. Other tasks within the team may include:

  • Attending meetings;
  • researching and writing blog posts;
  • collecting and reviewing interesting and relevant literature;
  • assisting with other projects in the INC;
  • being part of the crew at INC events.

We offer:


  • The opportunity to be part of a dedicated, informal, and inspirational organization with extended international networks;
  • experience in the front line of new developments in publishing;
  • a chance to enhance your writing, editing, media, and research skills;
  •  a small monthly compensation.

For further information you can contact Kelly Mostert
 at kelly@networkcultures.org.

Applications: if you are interested please send your resume and cover letter to kelly@networkcultures.org before July 21st 2017.

Open Book Publishers

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