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“.higher education institutions today are working with a very small part of the extensive and diverse knowledge systems in the world;”
Academic publishing
In the section What do we mean by 'decolonising' the curricula?, we noted that "decolonising the curriculum is the process of recognising, challenging and dismantling the white-western male-elite domination of knowledge taught in the academy. This process leaves open the potential to re construct knowledge in partnership with diverse cultures and create inclusive ways of knowing and teaching."
An integral part of this is to reconsider the role of traditional academic publishing, and explore other sources of knowledge. This aligns to the final question in Evaluate your reading list: 'What kinds of sources do we perceive to be of most academic value and why?'
A handful of mega-publishing houses, all based in the Global North, dominate academic publishing. They continue to privilege white-western viewpoints and experiences. The metrics by which academic outputs are measured and assigned 'value' reinforce this privilege and bias.
Three useful introductions to these issues are:
- Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research and higher education by Budd L. Hall and Rajesh Tandon.
- Decolonizing scholarly data and publishing infrastructures by Angela Okune.
- Open Access, the Global South and the Politics of Knowledge Production and Circulation by Leslie Chan.
Books and articles continue to be valuable sources of information, but they should be considered as just one facet of knowledge creation and exchange. A reading list that supports the 3Ds will look beyond these sources.
Academic practices
The range of sources that can be included in reading lists requires a reconsideration of the academic practices that support the accurate and ethical use of those information sources.
Will your students need to develop new skills and practices? If so, how will they do this, and how will you support them? How will they know what progress they are making?
You may find it useful to refer to the elements of knowledge management and the source reliability section of the Finding books and journals SkillsGuide.
When you are selecting books, chapters, articles and reports, consider whether the citations are obscuring the identity of the author(s). See the section on Citation justice for more information.
Citation justice
Citation justice
Citations are an essential part of academic practice and a key element of knowledge management but they hide an individual's identity and characteristics.
This makes it difficult to know whether the sources you are selecting to support your learning, teaching and research are contributing to the decolonisation, democratisation, and diversification of knowledge creation and transfer. Or whether those sources are perpetuating inequality and injustice.
The following works explore the idea of citation justice and how this can be achieved.
In March 2022, Nature published a news item about the emerging movement aiming to push researchers to pay more heed to inequities in scholarly citations. See The rise of citational justice: how scholars are making references fairer [University of Hull login required].
Related works include an LSE blog that notes the increasing evidence that women, people of colour, and other minoritised groups are systematically under cited in academic work. It suggests how academics and students can contribute to redressing this. See Aspirational metrics – A guide for working towards citational justice
That blog links to the UM Citation Guide , created by the blog's authors. The guide encourages everyone in academia to question why certain authors are “leaders in the field” and why they are the ones most quoted and referenced. Whether you are studying, researching, or teaching, the authors ask that you think about how you can increase the visibility of work by women and other people who have historically been marginalised in the production of knowledge.
Beware of the Internet
Beware of the Internet
The internet can be a rich source of information, and it is one way to find voices and knowledge that are minoritised and marginalised by traditional publishing.
However, like many aspects of society, the internet is biased and unequal. In addition, search engines work in different, and not always obvious or transparent ways.
A useful introduction to the challenges of searching for information on the internet is Safiya Umoja Noble's Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. [University of Hull login required.]
In Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight Alexander Monea explores how heteronormative bias is deeply embedded in the internet, hidden in algorithms, keywords, content moderation, and argues that the internet became straight by suppressing everything that is not. [Edited extract from the DOAB description].
Race after technology by Ruha Benjamin investigates how emerging technologies, from everyday apps to complex algorithms, can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. [Edited extract from the book description].
