But it also faces today an entirely different kind of crisis, the results of a betrayal of the public trust resulting from a massive abdication of the duty of care. And it is important not to diminish the extent to which such care is a duty owed by the institution both to its internal community—especially its students—and to the world.
This is a good way to phrase it. It highlights the importance of this crossroads.
Scholars such as Martha Nussbaum have pointed to the role of the humanities—especially philosophy, history, and literature—in cultivating “the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a ‘citizen of the world’; and, finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person,” abilities that are, she argues, “crucial to the health of any democracy internally, and to the creation of a decent world culture capable of constructively addressing the world’s most pressing problems” (7).
As a student of humanities I have to agree - they're sometimes considered 'soft skills' but they're important!
return it to a focus on public service
I may have glossed over this bit, but when did it focus on public service?
talk about openness, impact, public service, and generosity falls apart at the point at which it crosses paths with the more entrenched if unspoken principles around which our institutions are actually arranged today.
Ideals being put forward and actual values practiced are two totally different things. But it is still upsetting when a university will claim that it's 'open' 'engaging' and operating with 'service to the community' then goes and uses the traditional methods for tenure and promotion that underscore these values.
resistance to the notion that members of the public can serve as “peers”
No kidding! I can see the faces of academics turning blue!
citizen humanities
I've heard of citizen science, but I never thought about citizen humanities! Although it would logically follow!
But I do want to argue that we would benefit from doing more work in ways that are not just technically but also rhetorically accessible to the public.
I think that this is a hugely overlooked part of the open access discussion. Sure, one part is getting the knowledge out there, but the other part is making sure it's understood.
the public couldn’t possibly be interested in scholarly work
This doesn't seem to be the case in places that have open access.
Knowledge that is not public is not knowledge.”
Because it's not known!
lies at the core of the academic mission. It is at the heart of our values.
Yes. This goes back to Wilinsky's "right to knowledge." Knowledge is a public good and should be treated like one.
discovered and accessed
Step 1) Open Access - and being aware of this issue. Making choices to ensure your work is accessible.
Taking one’s work public can involve significant risk
This puts it into perspective - there is risk, but also as she's mentioned, reward. You just have to be willing to stand behind and accept the consequences of what you say - the adage 'pause before you post' has meaning here.
how to make the intellectual and professional connections that might help my writing develop and find an audience
I imagine this is a challenge for most.
Obsolescence,
Interesting choice of word! Becoming obsolete.
contribute to the publics to which they belong
Benefits for the student and their broader community. This kind of culture helps to ensure that research that is publicly funded benefits the public.
co-create learning outcomes,
Helps respect the student's learning autonomy.
Open Educational Resources
Making education more accessible to lower income people and others with challenges.
Think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The ORCID principles represented the first attempt to address the issue ofcommunity trust which have developed in our conversations since to include additionalissues. Other instructive examples that provide direction include Wikimedia Foundationand CERN.
Glad they included examples!
forkable
Capable of being moved or split.
we need to ensureit is not co-opted by particular interest groups.
But what about when it's already controlled by a particular interest group - ie. in need of reform?
Trust must run strongly acrosseach of the following areas: running the infrastructure (governance), funding it(sustainability), and preserving community ownership of it (insurance).
This is the first time I've seen this argument outlined in these three terms. It makes it clear and easier to understand.
In particular our view is that theunderlying data that is generated by the actions of the research community should be acommunity resource – supporting informed decision making for the community as well asproviding as base for private enterprise to provide value added services.
Seems like a reasonable guiding philosophy to me! More and more disciplines are beginning to acknowledge that research should be conducted, and data collected, in ways that have reciprocal benefits for the researcher and the community.
As part of this initiative, we are looking at possible pilots at a subset of institutions that would allow us to use repositories as a proof-of-concept for community-owned infrastructure, and also to reassert community control over our content.
I would be interested in reading about how these work... I know it's a brief article but it is a bit vague. I'd like to know some more specifics of how this would work in the real world!
The use of open source platforms, with appropriate community governance, is also critical to this goal and to preventing greater commercial control of both scholarly content and associated infrastructure.
Open up the process to the community. I'm trying to decide if this is democratizing...
“Everything we have gained by opening content and data will be under threat if we allow the enclosure of scholarly infrastructures.”
How does the community take back control?
proliferation of Western publishing biases
This isn't often mentioned! But it is totally true, if the major journals are owned by Westerners and they cater to Westerners, it acts as a big barrier to those bringing 'other' ideas forward. Dr. Vessuri discussed this in her talk at SFU and in the article: Vessuri, H., Guédon, J. C. & Cetto, A. M., (2013).
shifted away from an emphasis on managing content, and moved directly towards becoming a powerhouse in data analytics
They're diversifying, and Elsevier has shown its ability to predict the directions where publishing and research is going.
The counting of papers indexed by large-scale bibliometric databases—which mainly cover journals published by commercial publishers, as we have seen in this paper—creates a strong incentive for researchers to publish in these journals, and thus reinforces the control of commercial publishers on the scientific community.
True. These journals have the greatest star-power and prestige attached to them. Researchers want to publish in them and they'll continue to.
Of course, most journals rely on publishers’ systems to handle and review the manuscripts; however, while these systems facilitate the process, it is the researchers as part of the scientific community who perform peer review. Hence, this essential step of quality control is not a value added by the publishers but by the scientific community itself.
Publishers acting as the middleman.
On the whole, our results show that the top commercial publishers have benefited from the digital era, as it led to a dramatic increase in the share of scientific literature they published.
Super interesting that they were able to recognize that times were changing and change with them. You don't usually see that kind of fluidity in academia.
1) the creation of new journals and 2) existing journals being acquired by these publishers.
I feel like this could be some kind of law or something: the rich get richer, the law of increasing growth!
On the whole, for these two broad domains of scholarly knowledge, five publishers account for more than half of today’s published journal output.
This is a huge amount of control.
These trends are also seen in ownership of Canadian newspapers. Concentrated ownership threatens the impartiality of the news, and that small group of elites could have disproportionate influence on public opinion. (Cochrane, Dyck, and Blidook, 2017).
At least in journals there is peer review to keep things accountable.
One could expect, however, that these numbers have changed during the shift from print to electronic publishing.
This paper starts by telling us the evolution of journals. From the early days of the printing press to digital access. We all accept the shift from print to digital - what about the next step that we will one day look back on? Open Access?
imply because it allows a generalized form of scrutiny: anyone can check and recheck what is being proposed in the ‘Grand Conversation’.
To play devil's advocate, what about complex topics? These can be difficult for a layperson to decipher, how do they weigh the different viewpoints?
here are other possible centers of science that would bring a degree of real internationalization to Latin American science without condemning it to revert to submitting to a system that really aims at extracting good brains and good teams from the poor countries to aggregate them to the existing and dominant system.
Centres for science - like hubs? Interconnected, varying sizes and strengths.
This also reminds us that a misplaced obsession with flawed conceptions of ‘international’ or ‘mainstream’ science has been in place for decades.
This resonates with me. How often are we caught up in the latest 'trend' in research?
Finding ways to internationalize Latin American research has been a concern and even an obsession since the 1980s. However, working with old equipment and library collections that are both incomplete and dated put researchers at a drastic disadvantage
I really like the authors outline the barriers, what has been done to try and overcome them, and the continuing challenges.
It has nothing to say against development, but as it transforms the quality issue into a competition for best rankings, it introduces competition as the management tool in the worldwide research system, and it also defines the rules of the competition.
And then you just have people competing instead of exploring new avenues for research.
international co-authorship for developing countries is one of the indicators ... of incorporation into international scientific networks necessary for the advancement of science and technology in these countries’
An interesting bottom-up response to this knowledge deficit.
To revert to Dr De, his interest in cholera could be expected in Calcutta, but in Paris and London, in the late 1950s, cholera had the trappings of either a nineteenth-century disease, or a disease in far away lands
This is a good basis for explaining why Latin American research might not be valued in other countries. Different countries have different problems that don't always align.
I really appreciate the authors' use of examples and analogies!
poorly internationalized knowledge system
Everyone talks about globalization, you think this would be good for spreading knowledge. But, I suppose there are barriers, least of which is language.
I wonder where the reluctance to acknowledge Latin American research internationally comes from?
Publishing a good work from ‘unknown’ – i.e. unfamiliar – authors basedin ‘exotic’ institutions will not bring prestige to the targeted journal.
I'm getting the impression that this might create a cycle, where those with greater 'prestige' are elevated higher and higher regardless of their research quality.
prestige generally trumps visibility and even quality
It's better to be known for something sub-par than not known at all?
the present competition regime as it affects Latin American research does not do much to enhance the general quality of research in the region, and it may even decrease it, even as the number of ‘gold-medal’ scientists may rise to some extent.
I am interested in if they'll include recommendations for how to actually improve the overall quality of research being done.
With the competition regime generated by citation-based indicators, the number of prize-winning scientists may increase, butthe general quality of entire scientific communities may stagnate, or even decrease (loss of vocations, loss of interest, etc.).
This is a complex issue, and the authors present it in a very logical and accessible way.
hey were not meant to measure quality
A tool for understanding processes, and it has been distorted by perceptions and taken as a measure of quality.
he application of citation-based indicators was designed to delineate the circulation of theories, concepts, methods and tools, to analyze the networking connections among scientists and to measure the impact of published articles
This tool was good in theory, but has been misused in practice.
Access to scholarly literature is at the heart of current debates in the research community.
Yes, and it has important implications beyond just the research community. Do we have a right to knowledge? Shouldn't publicly funded research be public? This article talks about citation use, but what about others who are accessing the material but not for research?
prevalence and characteristics of OA
I'm unclear about how they're defining the prevalence and characteristics. Reading through the article, it would have been helpful for them to explain this early - I'm never totally clear on it.
higher citation counts for OA, suggesting a so-called “open access citation advantage”
OA articles are more easily accessed, therefore they're read more and cited more often.
there is a need for large-scale, high-quality data on the growth and composition of the OA literature itself.
Importance of this topic.
OA articles receive 18% more citations than average
Incentive for researchers to make their research public.
Furthermore, there is evidence of a sizable proportion of those sharing articles onsocial media (Twitter in particular) being non-academics
Yes. I feel that social media isn't the traditional mode for academics to distribute research, so the people that are using it likely belong to the larger, public world.
only bonafide peer-reviewed journalsare included in the study,
Definite strength.
The apparent interest by the public in accessing research uncovered by this studypoints to the need to better understand how the public will benefit from receiving access.
Yes, and what their motivations are.
In it, Willinsky argues (among other things)for the public value of OA, but readily admits that “the common reader’s download-ing of the latest article on trilobites from the Journal of Paleontology is unlikely to bethe number-one argument in convincing researchers”
Like Michelle mentioned in an earlier comment, there needs to be a bigger 'return on the investment.'
This study also goes beyond exploring the impact of the research, it also contributesto our understanding of the value that the public finds in having access, in a world thathas been increasingly moving towards providing such access through different open ac-cess model
The significance of this study.
move beyond looking atwhatis published, and to begin to understand its impact andreach.
The underlying 'right to knowledge' - a motivation to focusing on this impact/reach.
dearth
scarcity, deficit.
t is conceivable that students are learning the “conventionsof particular text types and disciplines” that Curry and Hewings (2005) suggest “may bebest demonstrated using example texts”
I find that this one of the biggest barriers to access! It can be so difficult to understand the conventions and jargon of another discipline! Pretty amazing that students are able to overcome this.
The remarkable 16–25% of the users who access the two portals used in this study are atestament of the public interest in the work being produced by academics.
Public interest, and potential public value! I wonder how they are using this information.
I call these “alternative” inthat neither group is made up of individuals who are themselves likely to be authors, andthus, all impact on these communities (public, pedagogic, or otherwise) would not havebeen detected in any citation-based (traditional impact) measure.
So this means that lots of people can be reading an article but it might not be cited in the traditional academic ways and so its hard to measure its impact.
do Latin American journals have impact and reach beyond the academiccommunity?. The answer: a resoundingYES.
This is significant! Probably I should read the whole dissertation... but I'm interested in who they benefit! The community? The individual looking for knowledge? The layperson?
All in all we might draw two conclusions from this: Firstly, academia never really sleeps. And secondly, we can answer John Bohannon’s question on Who’s downloading pirated papers? with a resounding Academics do for sure!.
Okay, I agree that it's likely academics who are accessing these papers... but I'm not totally convinced by the evidence he's given me. Maybe I'm missing something?
You’d naively expect that the larger a population is, the more downloads will be done.
Possible limitation here: Sci-Hub could be more well-known in some countries than in others.
When I saw this data I immediately wondered whether most of those downloads were made from outside universities/by the general public or whether they were done by academic researchers who couldn’t get access through their institution due to the lack of subscriptions.
The author's research question, and I am wondering the same thing! He's peaked my interest.
after all it’s the general public that’s paying academic research and they are the ones that suffer most from paid access.
Preach.
citizen science has become nearly as big a concept as science itself
This assertion might be going a bit too far.
typically do not yield the community-development and personal-empow-erment outcomes that have the power to impact social change (Calabrese Barton, 2012).
Another barrier we need to overcome - how do we translate what is learned in the classroom and bring it out into the community afterwards?
The fact that participants in some public Data Collection projects achieve some measurable gains in knowledge about science content or process is a hopeful finding. That participants do not seem to demonstrate noticeable changes in attitudes or behaviors is cause for reflection. Many fac-tors might account for this finding.
Hmm, I wonder what is preventing greater changes in attitudes towards science.
Also, hikers who were trained to follow a protocol for collecting data about invasive plants, and who subsequently gathered to analyze data and discuss responsible environmental behavior with respect to invasive plants, reported increased ability to recognize invasive plants and increased awareness of the effects of invasive plants on the environment (Jordan etal., 2011).
What a positive change! Beneficial at different levels!
results of citizen science projects have been published in high-profile scientific journals,
That's impressive!
public deficit in science knowledge and attitudes to recognition of the need to increased participatory input (Bauer, 2009)
Increasing public participation in process closes the deficit in science knowledge.
“Public Understanding of Science” (PUS)
What an unfortunate acronym.
public participation in scientific research
This is the definition the authors seem to be choosing.
The goal of citizen science espoused by Irwin is to bring the public and science closer together, to consider possibilities for a more active “scientific citizenship,” and to involve the public more deeply in dialogue and decision-making around issues related to risk and environmental threat
Admirable - bring all the stakeholders together. Researchers, policymakers, and the public - close the gap and increase engagement. I can understand why this is seen as 'democratizing.'
Educate the public about environmental issues. Citizen science advances environmental protection by EPA does not have a formal strategy on citizen science educating the public about environmental issues. EPA, but considerable work is underway in EPA programs and working with other agencies and organizations, can regions. These projects and activities on citizen science use citizen science as a STEM education tool, including support four areas of emphasis that help EPA accomplish involving young people in science and research.
I'm so in favour of this. What a great way to get kids involved in STEM/application of STEM.
EPA can build capacity in citizen science approaches environmental protection by helping communities as a whole and broadly support effective projects and understand local problems and collect quality data that programs through strategic investments; progress in a can be used to advocate for or solve environmental few key areas could enhance all four areas of emphasis and health issues. Citizen science provides effective at the Agency
Small changes for big gains.
Ensure feedback loops are in place
This is also a pillar of policy-making. Feedback and evaluations of programs for future improvement.
The “power of place” is the influence of emotional, cultural and material connections to the places where people live, which motivates action.
In my own discipline, I read a lot about the importance of place, and sense of place. I think this is a good recommendation and a way to engage locals and get them excited about projects.
A place-based approach is central to citizen science for defining and solving problems at the local and community levels. By increasing engagement at the local level and promoting outcomes in local decision making, place-based citizen science can reduce the need for regulatory intervention and increase the capacity of EPA to support environmental protection.
I understand that this report is supposed to demonstrate the benefits of including citizen science into the EPA... but I'm starting to agree with Alice - there are also benefits to the communities and individuals involved! I shouldn't have to 'read them in,' they could be more explicit.
Literacy
and science literacy!
Shared Knowledge
and public knowledge!
Common Vision. A public connected to and invested in the missions
Everyone working together towards the same goal, everyone engaged.
democratization of res-earch and policy making
Accountability.
participatory science
I like this term because this article connects citizen science to policy. In policy discourse, there is something called 'participatory policy analysis' (Fisher, 2010) and it refers to engaging the public in the policymaking process. Communities have unique insights, and they can provide expertise into certain subjects that outsiders cannot.
Embrace citizen science as a core tenet of environmental protection
Focusing on the individual level - the things that individuals can do to improve environmental protection.
National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology
Apparently, NACEPT is an independent advisory branch of the EPA.
itizen science broadens environmental protection by working across boundaries that can separate policy makers, scientists and members of the public, harnessing the shared commitment of grassroots efforts, formal research and federal protection to create a safer and healthier Nation.
This is so critical - it helps close the gap between researchers and policymakers, it creates common ground for everyone to stand on, and it engages the public in the policymaking process.
build an informed population that can advocate successfully for environmental protection,
Benefits beyond the environment - have the skills to decipher different kinds of knowledge.
Above all,the majority of data is in the hands of for-profit companies, which contradicts the openness and transparency that has motivated the idea of altmetrics
No kidding, what a paradox.
The conceptualizationcan hencebe used to construct meaningful indicators.In the case ofaltmetrics, recorded online eventsare used without having a proper understanding of underlyingactsand in how far they are representative of various engagements with scholarly work.
Until there is a conceptual framework for understanding altmetrics, they are unreliable indicators of engagement.
If Twitter orMendeley were discontinued, an entire data source would be lostand the acts of tweeting and saving to Mendeley would no long
I suppose if a new platform was created too, it would create difficulties for recognizing the new data source and measuring its impact.
broadly definedaltmetrics asthe “study and use of scholarly impact measures based on activity in online tools and environments”,
I could have used this definition earlier in the article.
Altmetrics comprisemany different types of metrics, whichhas made it difficult to establish a clear-cut definitionof what they represent
I'll say - altmetrics are confusing! Even more so by its broad definition.
I understand that this is discipline-specific writing, but this topic could have been presented in a more accessible way to the lay person.
peer-reviewed scientific journal still isthe most important channel to diffuse scientificknowledge
Perhaps there hasn't been much change historically, but contemporary changes seem significant. A move to open-access, and online journals that allow for wider access to scholar material. It may not be a revolution, but it is change.
s researchers increasingly use themto raise their visibility, connect withothers and diffuse their w
A possible answer to the question: how do we make research accessible to the general public?
Researchers would have the burden of making their research understandable to the lay man, and also of disseminating their information through informal (as opposed to professional channels) social media.
The above story is very uncomfortable,
Yes, it makes the wife look very disloyal.
On the path on which they had run,came rolling the head of the man' wife.
Haunting. The violence follows.
The name Yalek and the associated crests and songs will beperformed at all the pole-raising feasts and so will always be areminder about vulnerability and abusing power tocontrol others.
That's important context!
The young woman is assisted and healed by Loon Woman
Women supporting women.
slave woman is killed by the wolves,
She saved the young woman, making her a hero. But, she is also a casualty of the violence and the culture.
The main elements of the case brief are: (1) What arethe relevant facts of the story? (2) What is the main human problem thatthe story focuses on? (3) What is decided about the problem or how isthis problem resolved? (4) What is the reason behind the decision (saidand/or unsaid)-is there an explanation in the story?
Case brief analysis criteria - I can see how this is used in law.
e seek to re-embed stories (i.e. cases) in a fullercontext.
A reverse case-method analysis?
The young woman was pregnant and she gave birth to a child thatresembled a wolf-he had a pointed nose and a small tail
I'm not sure what to make of this. That she forever bears the experience she endured with the wolves?
The sun crest and its songs wouldbelong to her and her children, generation after generation.
I am picking up a lot of imagery and symbolism in this story. The young women wears a sun crest, the sun will rise again, she will overcome.
the women madeplans to escape
Resilience.
The prince once loved us just as heloves you now, but he discarded us and now we are slaves. When he hears ofsome other woman, he will throw you away too."
The term, 'disposability' comes to mind.
But their legs were covered in sores from theextreme cold and burns from the fire. One of the slaves took pity on theyoung woman, "Don't you know the man you are married to is a wolf
Gender-based violence in Indigenous oral traditions.
Indigenous feminist legal analysis.
Second methodology.
adapted case method.
First methodology.
developed detailed policy proposalsand practical models for dealing with violence against women."
This seems important! This community has developed policy recommendations - they should be considered by policymakers since they are the ones who are most affected.
A common theme I'm seeing in public policy - the lack of proposals integrating community input.
At the same time, Indigenous women have demonstrated greatresilience and leadership in bringing issues of violence more fully into thepublic spotlight."
Resilience indeed.
efforts are woefully inadequate in addressing broader issues of violencewithin Indigenous communities." There has been no sustainedconstitutional innovation dealing with Indigenous justice issues despitenumerous reports recommending greater Indigenous control of justiceunder section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982."
Wow. The problem is identified, but very limited legal solutions available.
n the United States, Indigenous legal powers and principles havebeen officially recognized and activated by both tribal and nationalgovernments in an attempt to respond to internal and external violenceagainst Indigenous women.
This would be an interesting comparative study - how has this impacted gender-based violence in U.S. Indigenous communities?
Gendered violence will not effortlessly disappear if colonialism isfully addressed. Indigenous men do not harm Indigenous women justbecause of colonialism.
Although gender-based violence disproportionately affects Indigenous women, it's too simplistic to say that this is just because of colonialism.
decolonization must be gendered;
Undertaken from a perspective that acknowledges the different experiences of gender. A gender-based analysis into how gender relations impacted the development of colonization.
Deer asserts that "[riesisting rape means resisting colonization."72 Herperspective importantly points to the use of sexual violence as a tool ofcolonization; however, if taken out of context, it also dangerously impliesthat gendered violence is only colonial and that Indigenous histories arepure and non-violent.
Very true, when I read Deer's statement I was initially taken aback, awash of it's implications.
we believe that as a historicalstatement this elder's view is simply wrong;
"simply wrong" - Perhaps. It should certainly be critically considered, it's could be that elder's experience and what she believes.
we advocate against understandingIndigenous legal traditions and Indigenous peoples as being frozen inhistory.
That's right - legal traditions are dynamic, they must be considered in context.
As noted, one of the more powerful discourses that is deployed inconversations about gender is the assertion that Indigenous societies had(and some argue, still have") perfectly balanced gender roles prior tocontact.? The notion here is that Indigenous women and men each hadtheir roles, and that these were equally valued, and they werecomplementary.
Moving to critique rhetoric, they confront this assertion.
Indigenous feminist legal theory
This is my first encounter with 'Indigenous feminist legal theory' - it's an interesting perspective of analysis!
all gendered discoursesshould be engaged with, discussed, and re-evaluated if they areoppressive.
Part of the authors' framework? This is how we will acknowledge violence against Indigenous women in the law? Whoever is interpreting these discourses has their work cut out for them.
Indigenous laws needto be understood as gendered.3 Indigenous law, like all other forms oflaw, is not neutral; rather, it is heavily influenced by dominant socialnorms.
I know that this seems straight forward, but it kind of hit me when I read it. Of course societal norms penetrate the law, it's important to recognize this.
Violence against women, though oftenexperienced in interpersonal relationships, is connected to larger socialstructures of inequality within any society.
Social determinants of violence: societal inequalities. How do policymakers and lawmakers reconcile these upstream, root causes?
racism,colonialism, sexism, and patriarchy, for example, are allinterconnected forms of violence that support one another.?
They support one another and they compound each other. It's difficult to separate the influences of one from another.
Indigenous legal subjectshave different lived realities because of their gender.
And their race, but this is implicit.
Indigenous laws need to be able to challenge violence against Indigenouswomen in all its forms-from physical violence to degrading stereotypes.
A tall order, Indigenous Law needs to be able to recognize a lot of complexities from history and representations.
It argues that the law can't be unbiased, it has to consider the prevalence of violence against Indigenous women.
spiritual violence, and symbolic violence.
I haven't considered these aspects of violence before. Attacks on culture, on spiritual health, on Indigeneity.
engaging with stories.
A possible limitation of the study?
We consider differentways that Indigenous people have attempted to address violence againstwomen using state law and modern Indigenous law,
I'm interested to see this comparison - how each stack up.
recognizing the prevalence of violence against women
Recognize in the law that disparities exist, and Indigenous women disproportionately are the victims of violence when compared to other populations.
we are mindful of theimportant critiques of using restorative justice processes to respond toviolence against women.1
An important caveat, victims have to restore their own lives after violence. I have a hard time understanding how victims and persecutors are supposed to work together for restoration after a violent act.
Indigenous law does not mean the same thing as responding withrestorative justice.
I'm glad that they acknowledge this. It provides clarity for us novices with limited background on the subject!
different systems to operate in harmony
Are they offering a framework for Indigenous law? Suggesting each Indigenous legal system could be different, group to group, and fit in with colonial legal systems.
There was gendered violence in Indigenous societies historically andsometimes it was very significant.
As a history student, I have found that these narratives are often excluded in the framing of Indigenous histories.
These histories are complex, it shouldn't be generalized. Also, when gendered violence is absent in the dominant narrative, it means the mechanisms that were used to deal with issues like violence are also omitted.
How might we begin thinkingabout violence against Indigenous women through the frame ofIndigenous law? Can Indigenous legal traditions-including stories asprecedent-and legal processes help us advance this work? What can acritical gendered approach to Indigenous laws offer to this discussion?
Research question.
Indigenous laws flow from Indigenous cultures as a contextuallyspecific set of ideas and practices aimed at generating the conditions forgreater peace and order.
My understanding is that indigenous cultures are diverse, so could it be the case that law customs are also diverse and vary from group to group?
We must move from focusing on general claims of culture toconsidering which specific aspects of Indigenous legal traditions can bedeployed to more effectively address this problem.'
Move from general claims about culture, to specific solutions.
What we consider here are some shifts in focus and somedifferent perspectives to determine what can be added to the presentdiscussions about violence against Indigenous women.
Dismisses the assumption that Indigenous cultures were not violent, offers a different perspective about the roots of violence against Indigenous women.
The danger of a rather conventional conception ofcivic engagement, however, is that it will be inadequate to the task ofinspiring and instructing the very people who in the years ahead willneed to undertake the difficult transformational change that Americandemocracy needs.
This puts the need for universities to have a an underlining civic purpose, and an 'education in citizenship' into perspective. If we don't teach civic engagement, those who are supposed to be the next leaders don't have the values, skills, or experience necessary to tackle upcoming problems.
perennial
longer-lasting
ephemeral
fleeting
deological differences
Interesting. Discord on the purpose/role of public service in learning/academia.
(manywere short-term, few offered students meaningful opportunities to re-flect on the complex socio-economic factors that caused the problemto begin with)
How do we integrate these experiences into universities?
voiding political activism
civic activism v. political activism.
‘a lifelong commitmentto community service, and ... promote sensitive, thoughtful and effec-tive citizenship and leadership’ (McKibben 1985).
The concept of citizenship is important here, and it's various contexts. One is a citizen, or a member, of various communities - what do we owe to our communities?
The purpose of this article is to describe how the movement unfoldedand how these ideological debates have produced a conception ofcivic engagement that calls for further revision if it is to fulfil its orig-inal democratic promise.
Thesis.
This is also the article's significance: change needs to continue, greater effort needs to be made so that the spirit of civic engagement can continue to permeate through universities. We need to reduce barriers.
Should the movement seek to disrupt prevailingacademic norms or gently amend them?
What is the place of a university's civic purpose in academia? How does this impact traditional academic conventions?
These include integrating community-based activities intocourses in order to allow students to grapple with complex real-worldproblems (that is, service-learning) (Eyler and Giles 1999; Stanton etal. 1999), reorienting scholarly activities to address pressing societaland community concerns (e.g., community-based research and actionresearch) (Boyer 1990; Driscoll and Lynton 1999; O’Meara and Rice2005), the development of sustained and reciprocal university/com-munity partnerships (Harkavy and Wiewel 1995; Jacoby 2003; Mau-rasse 2001), and preparing students to live in an increasingly diverseand inter-connected world (Gurin et al. 2002; Musil 2005).
Ideas of how civic engagement is grown/achieved by universities.
It also makes me wonder: what's next? How do we further grow this engagement and the civic purpose of publicly-funded educational institutions?
civic purposes
Good term. It implies that Universities have their own civic duty/mandate.
It stimulates conversations among a wide-ranging and trusting community of experts, empowers local voices, and educates the diverse next gen-eration of students
I was really optimistic at the start of this article. The ideas it introduced were positive and certainly have a place in bridging the divide between post-secondary institutions and the public, but, overall, I thought it fell short in scaling-up from the micro level, and providing more than just anecdotal evidence. (I know it wasn't all anecdotal, but it was more of a narrative of change, rather than a scientific approach to achieve such change).
At the same time, Syracuse University professors are seeing the diverse next generation grow up right before their eyes into aspiring professionals and academics.
Again, more of a subjective idealism than an evidence-based evaluation.
social infrastructure
I like this idea - it relates to 'physical' and 'imagined' geographies. The physical geography is your house, the 'imagined' or 'social' geography is your home.
compact re-development
Civic development seems to be the key? Environmentally-friendly, civic development. Although again, I'm extrapolating from the tight focus on the Syracuse case.
Syracuse University students and faculty are partners, plan-ners, activists, and designers in realizing that vision of the future.
I understand that Syracuse University is the focus... but I also thought there would be more of a bridge towards how other universities can increase public engagement, cooperation and participation. I thought Syracuse was a 'microcosm' - what about the larger working?
increase the impact of our scholarship on the pressing problems of the world—a vision we call “Scholarship in Action”—we needed to engage with communities of experts as complex as the challenges we face today
I like that this article acknowledges that Syracuse is like many universities, and that there is a shift in these institutions in how scholarship engages the public and serves the public.
This model, of 'anchor institutions' can be applied anywhere there is a university - it shouldn't stand alone, it should engage the community for mutual benefit.
That being said, this article has thus far been very idealistic. What about the limitations of public involvement? Is it realistic to ask for public participation? What do you get from that participation - look at low voter turnout and involvement at public forums. We must weigh both sides of the debate.
we invited all who considered themselves our stakeholders to share their thoughts on past successes and fail-ures—faculty and staff members; students; alumni; friends of the university; and, crucially for the present context, members of the local and regional community.
Community-involvement in re-orienting the school's public mission. Public forum.
growing national movement among higher education institutions re-emphasizing their public mission
What do university's owe to the public?
aimed at envisioning the university’s course for the future, explicitly starting from the assumption that the university, even as a private institu-tion, had a public mission, and that its map of academic excellence, from public affairs and public communications to information studies and architecture, among many other fields, drew sustenance from scholarly engagement in the world
A shift in focus: re-orienting the university towards the community, and to the public good.
contiguous
sharing a common border.
Scholars, students, and residents forged “communities of experts” to fulfill the central promise of an anchor institution: to make a sustainable difference in our community.
This article will take a community-based approach.
microcosm
a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger - a small part mirrors the larger working.
e suggest care is needed in identifying, and replacing, any simplistic policies that only pay lip service and symbolic attention to the public dimensions of scholarship and that inadvertently generate barriers to publicness
The recommendations of this article: review you RPT criteria, make the public dimensions of scholarship more than just a symbolic gesture - make them meaningful, reduce the barriers to publicness...
...Consider a model that measures the public good?
our analysis found that RPT documents signal that faculty should focus on uptake within their specific academic fields,
RPT documents show that if you want to advance, you make your work accessible to others in your discipline and get cited. This creates barriers to the public access and understanding, thus underscoring the many mentioned dimensions of 'publicness.'
That metrics are used in this wayis perhaps unsurprising, but their mention at three quarters of R-type institutions is indicative of just how common the call is for citation measures as evidence.
It also shows just how much 'being cited' is valued as compared to scholarship that engages the public/community. It comes down to traditional, academic, conventions being valued over newer, modern measures.
“some of them [open access journals] are peer-reviewed and of very high quality, and some of them are not. The critical issue for tenure and promotion is neither the medium of publication nor the business model of the publisher but the rigor of the peer review process and the quality of the papers.”2
This seems fair, the University of Central Florida weighing both sides.
‘predatory open-access journals
I understand their concerns, even though their concerns are not necessarily well-founded.
As has been mentioned in other comments, open access is a 'new' phenomenon and one that is likely less well understood in 'traditional' university settings. It's understandable that traditionalist would be cautious, and concerned for the quality of work being published and the authors paying for this opportunity.
But, this reductive way of framing OA, as getting quickly published for a fee, is simplistic and underscores the ways in which it is valuable.
Alternatively, efforts to have faculty work serve the public good might have universities seekout ways of interpreting and valuing the public impact of research activities, even when these activities do not engage with the community or are disseminated in traditional publication formats and venues.
They're offering another view: maybe it's not necessary to make research accessible to the community, or to engage the community in the research process. Instead, perhaps it is only the case that universities need to determine the value of their research to the public.
results offer new insight into how faculty careers are affected by the debates over the public nature of the institutions.
Analytical study - will show how faculty advancement is impacted by their public engagement, and their university's valuing of public engagment.
Our research shows that, while there is a relatively high incidence of the terms “public” and “community” in the RPT documents—that could be interpreted as an indicator that faculty do need to consider the nature of the publicness of their work—there are neither explicit incentives, nor clear structures of support for assessing the contributions of scholarship to the various dimensions of publicness.
There is a gilded expectation of faculty to engage with the 'public' and 'community' in their research/scholarship for promotion/advancement - but there is no way to support, measure, or encourage faculty members who do strive towards 'publicness.' It's less valued in RPT.
“scholarly standing.”
Wow. So not only do they have to be published, but other's in the field have to engage with what they have published.
the demarcation between this form of scholarshipand “traditional research” suggests that we need to look at how the latter is discussed
Yes, see whether public/community-engaged scholarships is valued more or less than traditional scholarship.
Although these terms are also found within the context of research, as in some of the quotes above, we noted that the word “research” can appear near the words “public” and “community” without being directly relevant to the notion of public-and/or community-engaged research
Interesting and important - public/community-engaged research not necessarily factoring in when evaluating faculty's contributions/promotion.
R-type
Doctoral
We began our analysis with the terms “public”and “community”to understand the degree to which the public is talked about, and to gain a sense of the context surrounding their inclusion in RPT documents.
I know that we are working towards establishing the role of the public in universities and in the advancement of faculty etc. but I am also wondering: would this impact a university's autonomy, and their ability to achieve their strategic goals?
Given the variety of units, organization structures, and naming conventions, our selection of which units to target was not perfectly systematic. It
Possible limitations of the study.
If not through publication and dissemination formats, a concerted effort to address community or societal goals might be encouraged and achieved through engaging communities in the research process itself.
Involve the community in the research process.
research outputs to take forms that are more ready for public consumption
Research should be delivered in a way that the public can understand. BUT, this doesn't factor into the equation for university faculty looking to advance their careers in their own discipline-communities.
In the sense of public patronage, we might expect the emphasis on research to move towards the use of open access models for scholarly and scientific publications, with the public gaining access to the work they are funding.
Public funds go to universities - does that mean that the public has a right to the research that comes out of those institutions? Open access would ensure the public can gain access to the work that their tax dollars are funding.
this research sought to explore the extent to which public and community engagementin research and scholarly work are reflected in RPT documents.
Is public and community engagement really valued in higher education? Is this reflected in the promotion of university faculty?
universitiesshould operate with the mission of addressing general social problems, promoting the common good, and emphasizing the social contributions of educational achievement beyond the individuals’ benefit of access to higher education.
I love this idea - social responsibility as a public good that is intimately tied to university education.
Examples of Some Actual Policy Outcome
These look like SWOT analysis... are they comparable?
democratic political process
We elect officials to form policy - that shouldn't mean that democratic engagement should stop there!
The disinclination of manyscientists to engage with the policy world, even amongstthe most collaboratively minded, is revealing. It high-lights an unresolved issue about the extent to which asystematic research-driven model can be adapted andimproved to reflect the need to compete with advocatesof other forms of evidence to secure the attention andsupport of policymakers.
YES! How do we change this orientation!
Collab-orative research practices tend to fall into two groups–using each other’s skills and expertise for relativelydiscrete sections of the research process (collaborative)and engaging in a whole process of equal control anddecision-making (co-productive)
Brilliant explanation of the distinctions between collaboration and co-production!
‘improved dissemination’
I disagree - I think the greater issue is improving understanding, and collaboration so policymakers better understand the evidence their looking at.
More generally, there are dif-ferent scientific and policymaker cultures
Refers to the need for interdisciplinary cooperation - but through what mechanisms?
eputational costsoutweigh the policy benefits?
Reputational costs! Usually the concern when a scientist advocates a certain position is the objectivity of the science.
socially embedded’ in authority relations and cultural contexts.
I'm still not totally clear on this. Is it that certain people hold the power and that's how the system works?
However, while in Germany the emphasis was on increasing fertility and economic growth, British policy focused on social investments through a higher employment rate of single parents and the long-term educational benefits.
Shows the importance of framing!
nalyses the way child care was reframed as an ‘economic issue’ in both countries in the 1960s.
Whereas now I think it's seen more as a social issue. Early policy theories considered more empirical, rational, 'economic' considerations. Now, we note that social, subjective, and environmental considerations also have a place.
They are supposed to enhance the knowledge base of evidence-based policy, to improve the accountability of regulatory science and to reconnect the input- and output-dimension of political legitimacy.
Yes, an important part of policy-making, a democratizing piece of the puzzle, and yet, one that is difficult to do.
the ‘rise of the unelected’
Loving this terminology. This could be the start of a dystopian novel.
‘ironically, the greater the utility of science in political affairs, the less it can maintain its image of objectivity that has been the very source of its political value’ (Nelkin, 1987, 293
This paradox seems to be popping up in discourse: That we need objective science in policy, but once the science crosses into the policy domain it's no longer objective.
policy-based evidence is supposed to mean exactly the opposite: the failure to include relevant knowledge, the claim of distorted evidence when actually it is not, the interference with research and its opportunistic use, the fabrication, suppression, falsification and instrumentalisation of facts for political purposes.
Policy-based evidence definition - seems like a 'dirty' word in the public policy discipline.
endarkenment’
Preach - focussing on the 'rational' excludes other subjective considerations.
Paul Rudd
Had a giggle over 'Paul Rudd' PM of Australia.
in the relationship between science and policy actually points to a research gap.
I'm interested in what they mean by 'research gap.'
evidence-based policy rests on its own mechanisms of exclusion and selectivity, that is, modes of black-boxing, knowledge monopolisation, blame avoidance and over-simplification
Systemic barriers to knowledge entering policy cycles.