Open access in dispute in Latin America: Towards the construction of a digital scientific community

SALATINO, JAVIER MAXIMILIANO

Digital Activism and Indigenous Community Media in Latin America

Palgrave Macmillan

Lugar: Basingstoke; Año: 2020;

This chapter focuses on the historical expansion of the Open Access movement, the infrastructure of which has grown over the past 30 years at the national and regional levels. I argue that OA has played a key role in the development of a scientific distribution structure in Latin America and examine this process in order to understand the contemporary tensions that have turned OA into a disputed field.Moreover, I propose a new conception of Open Access. My main argument is that the Open Access movements, in Latin America and internationally, ought to also articulate a different dimension of knowledge production that go beyond issues related to broader circulation issues. It is necessary to re-discover alternative paths to the democratization of science that include regional science assessment criteria, a new definition of excellence that is established beyond mainstream metrics, and a set of integral scientific tools that contributes to promoting local scientific development.