[Commlist] Conference Radical Open Access III: From Openness to Social Justice Activism

Radical Open Access III: From Openness to Social Justice Activism

Date: 10 and 11 April 2025
Location: The Milstein Room, Cambridge University Library (UK), and online
Schedule:_https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/conferences/radicaloa3/schedule/ 
<https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/conferences/radicaloa3/schedule/>_
The third installment of the Radical Open Access Conference focuses on 
the relationship between openness and activism, exploring what is next 
for radical forms of OA by addressing questions around publishing and 
social justice that those connected to 
the<https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/>_Radical Open Access 
Collective <https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/>_ (ROAC) have 
been putting forward for years.
Join us for two days of critical discussion about creating a more 
diverse and equitable future for open access.
More details and registration: 
_https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/conferences/radicaloa3/ 
<https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/conferences/radicaloa3/>_ (please 
note the separate registration for each day)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speakers: Élisabeth Arsenault, Sarah-Anne Arsenault, Lucy Barnes, Simon 
Batterbury, Marc Herbst, Rupert Gatti, Angela Okune, Charmaine Pereira, 
Jeff Pooley, Ela Przybyło, Magalí Rabasa, Ash Sharma, Stevphen 
Shukaitis, Lauren Smith, Alessandra Tosi, Vincent van Gerven Oei
Journals and Presses: _darkmatter 
<https://darkmatter-hub.pubpub.org/>_,<http://www.editionscienceetbiencommun.org/>_Engaging 
Science, Technology, and Society 
<https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests>_<http://www.editionscienceetbiencommun.org/>/( 
<http://www.editionscienceetbiencommun.org/>/ESTS), 
<http://www.editionscienceetbiencommun.org/>_ÉSBC 
<http://www.editionscienceetbiencommun.org/>_,<https://feralfeminisms.com/>_Feminist 
Africa <https://feministafrica.net/>_, _Feral Feminisms 
<https://feralfeminisms.com/>_,<https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE>_Journal 
of Political Ecology 
<https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE>_,<https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org>_Journal 
of Radical Librarianship 
<https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org>_,<https://www.mediastudies.press/>_mediastudies.press 
<https://www.mediastudies.press/>_,<http://www.minorcompositions.info/>_Minor 
Compositions 
<http://www.minorcompositions.info/>_,<https://www.openbookpublishers.com/>_Open 
Book Publishers 
<https://www.openbookpublishers.com/>_,<http://punctumbooks.com/>_punctum 
books <http://punctumbooks.com/>_,<http://www.joaap.org/>_The Journal of 
Aesthetics & Protest <http://www.joaap.org/>_
*Conference Concept*
The first<https://radicaloaconference.postdigitalcultures.org/>_Radical 
Open Access Conference 
<https://radicaloaconference.postdigitalcultures.org/>_ in 2015 started 
from the position of neoliberalism’s co-option of open access (OA) 
publishing as just another profitable business model and instead put 
forward a different radical and scholar-led vision for OA. This led to 
the formation of the<https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/>_Radical 
Open Access Collective 
<https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/>_ (ROAC), a community of 
scholar-led, not-for-profit presses, journals, and other OA projects with
‘a shared investment in taking back control over the means of knowledge 
production in order to rethink what publishing is and what it can be.’
Although a focus on more resilient and ethical scholar-led forms of OA 
publishing remains crucial in the ROAC, ten years later many connected 
to the original ROAC community have moved beyond openness and towards 
other goals, especially now that OA publishing is increasingly becoming 
the standard. In this context, the question is less about openness as 
such and more about openness for whom and at what cost. At the same 
time, radical OA projects and communities promoting alternative and 
experimental forms of publishing have converged with various digital 
activisms and social movements organising around intersectional 
feminist, post- hegemonic, and ecologically-minded perspectives. In 
these contexts, the social activities making up publishing have become a 
space for critical reflection on and intervention into persistent power 
asymmetries in academia and traditional divisions of labour in 
publishing. They also have been connected with broader concerns of ‘how 
to work and live together’ in a world marked by humanitarian and 
planetary emergencies (_Kiesewetter, 2024 
<https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/rebekka-kiesewetter-guest-editorial-notes/>_).
With this third instalment of the Radical Open Access Conference, we 
seek to explore what is next for radical forms of OA and, once again, 
discuss questions around publishing and social justice that those 
connected to the ROAC have been putting forward for years, while 
reclaiming ownership over the means of knowledge production and working 
towards different activist goals.
As a mutually-supportive community that brings together and is made up 
of scholar-led, not for profit publishers, journals, and other OA 
projects, as well as theorists, scholars, librarians, technology 
specialists, activists and others, from different fields and 
backgrounds, both inside and outside of the university, the collective 
has always attempted to strengthen alliances between OA and related 
struggles – including those that are opening out from OA (_Kember, 2014 
<https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/6973218a-f100-4057-abe0-0a67c120e87d/content>_) 
and are exploring how academic writing and publishing can both 
contribute to and be itself a form of social justice activism.
Going back to what we have explored in previous conferences and 
extending from there: how have or can radical OA projects establish what 
Laclau and Mouffe called ‘chains of equivalence' (_Laclau and Mouffe 
<https://www.versobooks.com/products/1158-hegemony-and-socialist-strategy>_,<https://files.libcom.org/files/ernesto-laclau-hegemony-and-socialist-strategy-towards-a-radical-democratic-politics.compressed.pdf>_1985 
<https://files.libcom.org/files/ernesto-laclau-hegemony-and-socialist-strategy-towards-a-radical-democratic-politics.compressed.pdf>_) 
with other movements and struggles for social justice through their 
publishing activities? And in what way can we establish these chains of 
equivalence, or how can we scale small (_Adema and Moore, 2021 
<https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.918>_), while at the same time retaining 
a plurality of open movements, theories, and philosophies, which may at 
times conflict and contradict one another, but which can nevertheless 
contribute to the construction of a common, oppositional horizon?
Against this background, /Radical Open Access III: From Openness to 
Social Justice Activism/ aims to showcase a variety of alternative ways 
of organising around scholarly publishing as they unfold through social 
activities such as writing, editing, translating, maintaining, and 
archiving across disciplinary, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. It 
includes contributions from the radical OA publishing community but also 
aims to reflect insights from adjacent fields and struggles, for example 
from experiments in arts and humanities scholarship, digital activism, 
and social movement organising.
As part of this conference, we seek to explore questions such as:

  *
    How can social justice activism be promoted or unfolded through
    academic publishing?
  *
    What is the value of collectivising through publishing projects?
  *
    What are the dynamics, challenges, and opportunities that arise when
    individuals and communities from diverse backgrounds come together
    to work on shared radical publishing projects?
  *
    How can we support each other and make academic publishing more open
    to supporting social justice activism and the fight against crises
    across a range of social, political, and ecological domains?


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