Engaging Platforms in Open Scholarship/Alternative Models and Approaches

Platform Cooperatives, Digital Commons, and Knowledge Infrastructures

Birkinbine, Benjamin. 2020. Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software. London: University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.16997/book39.

This book considers the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, which Birkinbine argues is generally proclaimed to be a revolutionary development, one that supports greater autonomy on the part of contributors and users. Birkinbine seeks to intervene in this claim by presenting a critical examination of the relationship between FLOSS developer communities and the for-profit corporations that sponsor or appropriate FLOSS projects. The book’s central thesis is that free and open source software is caught in a seemingly paradoxical middle. On one side, communities of programmers work together to create open source software as a digital commons, free and findable for all. On the other side, for-profit corporations attempt to capture the value produced through these communities, by attempting to gain control of the processes of production, the products that result from these processes, and the spaces or markets that house these processes and products. While Birkinbine notes that the relationship between FLOSS communities and for-profit companies is not always antagonistic, it is certainly vulnerable to this dynamic, particularly in instances where the interests of the communities diverge from the interests of the for-profit companies. Ultimately, this book is a cautious exploration of the commons, specifically the digital commons, as a paradoxical alternative to capitalism because it presents opportunities to diverge from traditional (capitalistic) ways of producing and distributing value or resources. At the same time, the commons cannot be entirely separated from capitalism because it benefits from, interacts with, occasionally overlaps with, and emerges from within capitalism. As a result, the (digital) commons alone cannot be a comprehensive antidote to the inequities and harms exacerbated (if not brought on) by capitalism. However, as Birkinbine importantly underscores, it can be a part of broader strategies for resistance.

Creative Commons. n.d. “When We Share, Everyone Wins.” Creative Commons. Accessed July 25, 2021. https://creativecommons.org/.

Founded in 2001, Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides the public with free copyright licenses (“Creative Commons licenses”) for a variety of creative and academic works. Today, these licenses have been widely adopted, including by Wikipedia, Flickr, as well as many digital research commons—such as the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Commons, the CUNY Academic Commons, and the Humanities Commons. As a result, Creative Commons licenses and the Creative Commons network’s public domain tools have created a large, distributed digital commons of open resources, dramatically expanding the number of works that are freely available in the broader digital commons of the Internet. In addition to providing a range of non-commercial as well as commercial licenses, the Creative Commons currently supports community-based initiatives and digital tools that aim to improve access to open knowledge and OERs.

De Broves, Olivier Rafélis. 2022. “Les Coopératives Au Secours Des Travailleurs de Plateforme : Quelles Innovations Contre l’ubérisation?: Une Étude de Cas Au Québec.” Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research 13 (S1): 92–114. https://doi.org/10.29173/cjnser542.

De Broves examines the paradoxes in platform cooperativism through a case study of the Eva platform, a cooperative that competes against Uber in Quebec. The paradox perspective analyzes the contradictory demands and tensions that arise in organisations. In the case of Eva, there are two main paradoxical tensions: between economic efficacy and social responsibility, and between hierarchy and democracy. These paradoxes manifest in the precarious work conditions of the drivers (so Eva can remain competitive against other platform companies) and the marginalization of the workers in governance decisions. The identified tensions show that despite their counter-hegemonic appearance, platform cooperatives risk replicating the injustices of platform capitalism if they do not address the conflicts between labour and capital.

Dulong de Rosnay, Mélanie, and Felix Stalder. 2020. “Digital Commons.” Internet Policy Review 9 (4): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.14763/2020.4.1530.

Dulong and Stalder trace the history of the movement of the digital commons in several areas such as free software, free culture, public domain, open data, and open access. Contrary to market-based or bureaucratic forms of organization, commons are a holistic and radical approach to organise collective action and the (re)production of resources based on horizontal governance and sharing. As a subset of this approach, digital commons seek to provide equitable access to resources such as data, information, culture, and knowledge that are created or maintained online. The four foundational dimensions of digital commons are open licensing, a collective notion of authorship, peer production, and community governance. Digital commons are an alternative to surveillance capitalism, and they are expanding to more fields such as urban participation and personal data. However, they cannot succeed on their own because they are part of a comprehensive vision of a participatory, democratic, and ecological society that would require changes in business models, infrastructure, governance mechanisms and social attitudes.

Fuchs, Christian. 2021. “The Digital Commons and the Digital Public Sphere How to Advance Digital Democracy Today.” Westminster Papers in Communication & Culture 16 (1): 9–26. https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.917. 

Fuchs explores the democratic potentials of the digital commons and the digital public sphere as alternatives to digital capitalism, which furthers social problems that threaten democracy, such as the exploitation of digital labour, surveillance, fake news, individualism, and a lack of time and space for sustained political debate. In contrast, the digital public sphere seeks to publish information and promote critical public debate mediated by digital information and communication technologies. However, the commodification and capitalisation of digital practices have prevented the formation of a digital public sphere, which would require the development of “slow media”, a reduction in the amount of information flows to promote a deeper engagement with other users and with the content of political communication. The other alternative, the digital commons, refers to digital resources that are commonly controlled by humans in four dimensions: nature, economy, politics, and culture. Digital commons projects might advance one dimension of the commons but not others, and they also risk being compatible or co-opted by capitalism, as happened with the mainstream (gold) model of open access publishing. Despite these caveats, the digital commons and the digital public sphere can advance democracy if they are developed on platforms run by public service organisations or by the civil society, and they support the advancement of public services and the common good in society in general.

Fuster Morell, Mayo. 2014. “Governance of Online Creation Communities for the Building of Digital Commons: Viewed through the Framework of Institutional Analysis and Development.” In Governing Knowledge Commons, edited by Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, and Katherine J. Strandburg, 281–312. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199972036.003.0009.

Fuster Morell examines the governance of online creation communities (OCCs), which are communities of individuals that mainly interact via a platform of online participation to build a common-pool resource. The author lists eight interrelated dimensions that determine governance in OCCs: 1) collective mission, 2) cultural principles and social norms, 3) platform design, 4) self-management of contributions, 5) formal rules or policies applied to community interaction, 6) licence, 7) decision-making and conflict resolution systems for community interactions, and 8) infrastructure provision. Fuster Morell analyzes in greater depth infrastructure provision because it shapes several of the other governance dimensions. Infrastructure provision can be open or closed to community involvement and lead to four models of governance of OCCs (from least to more open): corporations, mission enterprises, representational foundations, and self-provision assemblies. The more closed models are able to generate larger communities but they are less collaborative, while foundation and enterprise models raise more collaborative, mid-sized communities. As infrastructure constitutes the means of production of common-pool-produced resources, Fuster Morell concludes that OCCs only generate a commons if they have some form of community governance and the generated resources are openly accessible, or if both the resources and the infrastructure are available in open access.

Glass, Erin R. 2018. “Engaging the Knowledge Commons: Setting Up Virtual Participatory Spaces for Academic Collaboration and Community.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, 100–115. Kent, UK: Elsevier Science & Technology.

Glass introduces the concept of “participatory” digital commons and discusses some of the differences between these platforms and institutional repositories, on the one hand, and for-profit academic or non- academic social networking sites such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate, on the other. She maintains that participatory commons can help libraries to simultaneously engage new publics and strengthen existing mandates to preserve and share knowledge. Situating her work in relation to the fields of library studies, media studies, and scholarly communication, Glass also summarizes findings from two of her own commons-based projects, Social Paper and KNIT. She encourages libraries to embrace the participatory affordances of such projects, and she reminds researchers of the important role libraries can and will continue to play in supporting this kind of collaborative and engaged scholarship in the future.

Hensher, Martin, Katie Kish, Joshua Farley, Stephen Quilley, and Katharine Zywert. 2020. “Open Knowledge Commons versus Privatized Gain in a Fractured Information Ecology: Lessons from COVID-19 for the Future of Sustainability.” Global Sustainability 3. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.21. 

In this intelligence briefing, Hensher, Kish, Farley, Quilley, and Zywert explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed serious problems, both for the public and for researchers, with the ways that knowledge is currently produced, shared, protected, and monetized. They argue that open knowledge commons are essential to global efforts to address these problems and their root causes. In the process, their briefing bridges the fields of health and medical sciences, information studies, sustainability, and information policy, with particular attention to conversations about COVID-19 and intellectual property, knowledge scarcity, and misinformation. However, the authors are equally concerned with other problems that are already apparent alongside—or that may emerge in the wake of—COVID-19. They advocate for open, publicly funded research and knowledge commons as the most promising means of improving global responses to such crises.

Jensen, Graham, Alyssa Arbuckle, Caroline Winter, Talya Jesperson, Tyler Fontenot, Ray Siemens, and the ETCL and INKE Research Groups. 2022. “Fostering Digital Communities of Care: Safety, Security, and Trust in the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Commons.” IDEAH 3 (2). https://doi.org/10.21428/f1f23564.ed75625f.

Taking the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons – a national, bilingual research repository and social networking site for humanities and social sciences researchers – as its focal point, this article explores what, in an era of increasingly networked, increasingly digital scholarship, fostering care looks like in both theory and in practice. The authors attend to the possibilities and complexities that can spring up when academic scholarship, digital technologies, openness, and ethical practices rooted in mutual care are brought into relationship with each other. In particular, the authors raise important questions regarding how digital knowledge environments can ensure openness, with its attendant principles of equity and inclusion, is balanced with closure or boundaries that safeguard community members and their work are free from bullying, harassment, and other digital forms of attack employed by bad actors. Rather than resolve this tension, the paper underscores the role it plays in generating discussion and opening conversations—because, tempting though it may be to believe otherwise, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Nevertheless, the authors do share the approaches the HSS Commons adopted in response to the aforementioned tension; these centre on intentional approaches to technical and design features, policies and governance structures, listening campaigns, and engaging in critical reflexive practice. They argue that while challenges such as exclusion and exploitation persist, creating digital commons that prioritize care is crucial for advancing inclusive, community-driven scholarship.

Kostakis, Vasilis. 2010. “Peer Governance and Wikipedia: Identifying and Understanding the Problems of Wikipedia’s Governance.” First Monday, March. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v15i3.2613.

Kostakis explores the governance issues on Wikipedia regarding the type of contents the site should include. This internal struggle has two visions: inclusionists (who support the development of a broad range of Wikipedia articles) and deletionists (who think Wikipedia should be more selective and avoid trivial topics). Based on interviews with ex-Wikipedians, the author finds that there is a need to reform the clarity of Wikipedia’s rules and conflict resolution process for content disputes, as this struggle over which content to include is detrimental to the project.

Madison, Michael J., Brett M. Frischmann, and Katherine J. Strandburg. 2019. “Knowledge Commons.” In Routledge Handbook of the Study of the Commons, edited by Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom, and Dan Cole, 76–90. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315162782-7. 

Madison, Frischmann, and Strandburg introduce the “knowledge commons research framework” as a means of analyzing and comparing knowledge-based commons. In the process of outlining their framework, they make multiple claims for the ways in which it intervenes in ongoing theoretical discussions about governance, resource scarcity, intellectual property rights, openness, and the production and dissemination of information. Their suggested framework for analyzing knowledge commons builds on definitions and prior frameworks developed by information studies and legal scholars, for example, but is particularly indebted to Elinor Ostrom, Charlotte Hess, and Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. Nevertheless, the many questions generated by their study redirect the conversation in new and potentially generative directions by foregrounding how overlapping, contingent, and evolving factors contribute to the complexity of knowledge commons as well as to the diverse motivations and roles shaping user interactions within them.

Martin, Shawn. 2019. “Historicizing the Knowledge Commons: Open Access, Technical Knowledge, and the Industrial Application of Science.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 3 (23). https://doi.org/10.5334/kula.16.

Martin examines the history of knowledge commons alongside histories of open access and academic publishing. He asserts that further attention to these intersecting and sometimes contentious narratives can shed important light on more recent conversations about open access in the field of scholarly communication, as well as in academia more generally. With reference to the scholarship of Christine Borgman and Robert Merton, he develops this assertion through brief but wide-ranging surveys of two historical periods—spanning approximately 400 years in total, from the seventeenth century to the present —identified by another theorist, Jurgen Osterhammel: the “Republic of Letters” and the “modern knowledge society.” Martin suggests that, in many ways, contemporary scholarly communication and knowledge production practices resemble those of earlier researchers, underscoring a persistent tension in today’s scientific communities and knowledge commons between open access ideals and the practical, economic pressures that frequently prevent them from being realized.

Novković, Sonja, Karen Miner, and Cian McMahon. 2023. “Cooperative Governance in Context.” In Humanistic Governance in Democratic Organizations, edited by Sonja Novković, Karen Miner, and Cian McMahon, 81–117. Humanism in Business Series. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17403-2_4.

Novković et al. describe different governance systems in cooperatives depending on their membership type (consumers, workers, producers, or multistakeholder cooperatives) and context. The authors state that decision-making practices in cooperatives depend on the purpose of the organization, but that they all follow democratic governance according to their size, maturity, and type. The governance of cooperatives is shaped by structures, processes, and dynamics. Structures contemplate the ownership and control of the co-op, its governance bodies, and its rules and policies. The governance processes define the direction-setting and control of the co-op, which happens through accountable participative decisions in formal or informal channels of communication. The governance dynamics determine how cooperatives react to internal and external forces that test the health of their governance system in the face of shocks and crises. As governance structures, processes, and dynamics are context-specific, the authors conclude that there are multiple forms to achieve “best” cooperative governance, but they should all manage member expectations of a democratic system that can address internal forces and external pressures.

Okune, Angela, Rebecca Hillyer, Leslie Chan, Denisse Albornoz, and Alejandro Posada. 2019. “Whose Infrastructure? Towards Inclusive and Collaborative Knowledge Infrastructures in Open Science.” In Connecting the Knowledge Commons—From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructure (The 22^nd International Conference on Electronic Publishing Revised Selected Papers), edited by Leslie Chan and Pierre Mounier. Marseille: OpenEdition Press. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.oep.9050.

Okune, Hillyer, Chan, Albornoz, and Posada push back against the idea that open science, open access, and open data necessarily make digital tools and platforms equally available to researchers or other interested parties. These digital technologies—and the networked communities they can help create— provide many opportunities for collaboration and connection; however, as the authors point out, the benefits of digital knowledge infrastructures in and for scholarly communities have also distracted members of these communities from adequately addressing existing social and systemic issues. Extending the intersectional work of Black feminist scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Safiya Umoja Noble, the authors present three case studies from the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet) as part of their larger argument about how technology is neither ideologically neutral nor an unequivocally positive instrument of social change. In closing, they reflect further on the importance of inclusivity, design, collaboration, and sustainability, as well as the possible limitations of their own intersectional framework.

Papadimitropoulos, Vangelis, and Haris Malamidis. 2024. “The Transformative Potential of Platform Cooperativism: The Case of Co-opCycle.” tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 22 (1): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v22i1.1418.

Papadimitropoulos and Malamidis examine the case study of the bike delivery co-operative CoopCycle and contrast the model of platform capitalism with the model of platform cooperativism, which has a transformative potential when combined with an approach of open cooperativism. Platform cooperatives follow principles such as a communal ownership of the means of production, self-management, and value distribution. When combined with open cooperativism, they apply open licenses, protocols, and platforms to produce commons. Coopcycle engages in open cooperativism by licensing the bike-delivery software they design under a license called CoopyLeft, which limits its use to cooperatives that pay membership dues and comply with the values of the social and solidarity economy. Using the case of Coopcycle, the authors argue that the model of open cooperativism has comparative advantages against proprietary business models because it allows accessing common-pool resources and benefiting from knowledge diffusion and innovation spillovers. While the authors recognize that it is unclear how CoopCycle’s model can challenge the hegemony of platform capitalism, this case can show how platform cooperatives can be formed and governed so they can turn into open cooperatives.

Sandoval, Marisol. 2020. “Entrepreneurial Activism? Platform Cooperativism Between Subversion and Co-Optation.” Critical Sociology 46 (6): 801–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920519870577.

In this article, Sandoval offers a ‘solidarity critique’ of the proposal that collective ownership and democratic governance (integral to platform cooperativism) represent an alternative to / against / within capitalism. Key to this critique is the argument that, as much as cooperatives can be utilized as vehicles of and for radical practice, they can also quickly become tools that reinforce and advance neoliberal narratives of self-help and responsibility. It is not enough, Sandoval argues, to replace entrepreneurs with cooperative entrepreneurs. This sort of ‘uncritical engagement’ engagement with entrepreneurialism reduces cooperativism and its potentials for political action to the realm of the market and market logics, in essence nullifying cooperativism as a viable, radical, alternative. Sandoval wants cooperatives to succeed—at resisting, rather than adopting capitalism. By digging into critiques of commercialization and precarious labour practices, by contesting the structures and systems that leave little alternatives to begin with, and by jointly advocating for policy development and reform, cooperatives can deepen social solidarity and truly become a global movement.

Scholz, R. Trebor. 2023. Own This! How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet. London New York: Verso.

“Own This!” could be read as a call-to-action, blueprint, and critique of digital platforms and its structurations of labour and life. From the outset of the book, Scholz argues that the labour required to sustain digital platforms is typically provided by migrant workers who receive little pay, virtually no protections, or benefits—all while billions of dollars accumulate in the “bank accounts of Silicon Valley executives” (2). Viewing this issue as intertwined with efforts to reclaim public control over the Internet, its apps, and its protocols, Scholz presents ‘platform cooperatives’ as an alternative. Platform cooperatives blend platforms with the principles of cooperatives (namely, shared ownership and democratic decision-making) in order to gain greater control over the provision of their labour and secure fairer, safer, and more equitable working conditions. The book has eight chapters, including the introduction and epilogue. The first two chapters focus on making the case for cooperatives, and Scholz makes a concerted effort to highlight real-world examples of cooperatives throughout. They also offer an introduction and review of the principles underpinning cooperatives that may be helpful to those who have only a passing familiarity with the concept of cooperatives. The third and fourth chapter consider issues of scale and definitions of value from the perspective of platform cooperatives. Scholz’s discussion of expanding theories of social good beyond economic indicators to others that include collective and individual well-being, as well as equity and sustainability, may resonate with readers who are interested in discussions regarding scholarly impact and the value of open access research. The fifth chapter considers partnerships, including those between unions and cooperatives, and the sixth chapter focuses on data–data commons, data democracy, and liberating data from private interests. The last chapter presents a vision of a near-future (2035) where cooperatives thrive and cities form alliances. In the epilogue, Scholz addresses the question of how to start a platform cooperative, offering some practical tips and points for further consideration.

Scholz, Trebor. 2016. Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. https://rosalux.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/RLS-NYC_platformcoop.pdf.

Scholz explores platform cooperativism as an alternative to the exploitative labour and ownership relations of the sharing economy, characterized by platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon Mechanical Turk. Scholz outlines three parts of platform cooperativism: 1) it involves using the technology of platforms with an ownership model centred around democratic values; 2) it promotes solidarity between workers and consumers; 3) it reframes ideas of innovation and efficiency to benefit all. The guiding principles of platform cooperativism include decent pay for workers, data transparency, portable worker benefits, rejection of excessive workplace surveillance, and a right to log off. As this model represents technological, cultural, political, and social changes, Schotz concludes that platforms co-ops depend on relationships with other cooperatives, funding schemes, lawyers, workers, and designers that should be committed to the open commons and the envisioning of a society that is not centred around shareholder enterprises.

Srivastava, Lina. 2024. “Building Community Governance for AI.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, March 4, 2024, sec. Technology. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/ai-building-community-governance.

Starting from the position that artificial intelligence can offer real social benefits, Srivastava focuses on making the case for community-led approaches to governance as an alternative to the consolidation of power by tech giants. Viewing AI as a communal resource, Srivastava argues, is a necessary first step. In doing so, the focus is shifted to prioritizing the collective good over private profits, for instance by redistributing the benefits of AI across communities instead of sequestering them to a limited few. To get there, though, we need regulatory environments that are strong enough to implement and protect public oversight while addressing issues related to abuse, fraud, data accessibility and privacy. We also need safeguards that ensure cultural, civil, and human rights are respected. Lastly, we need updated frameworks for governance that emphasize accountability, transparency, ethics, community, intentionality, and so on. In addition, Srivastava offers examples of some collectives and cooperatives that are engaged in this work. These include: Promising Trouble, Careful Industries, the Technology Salon, Black in AI, the Cyber Collective, and the Distributed AI Research Institute.

Thunder, James, and Mark Intertas. 2020. “Indigenizing the Co-Operative Model.” Manitoba, Canada: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2020/10/Indigenizing%20the%20Co-Op%20Model%20Report%20-%20OCT2020.pdf.

Thunder and Intertas compare the mainstream co-op model with Indigenous cultures and values to identify how this model can better fit the values of Indigenous peoples. The authors argue that co-operative principles can align with Indigenous principles, values, spirituality, and self-determination. However, there are challenges in the establishment of Indigenous co-operatives, such as historical and ongoing racism, lack of awareness of co-ops, legal barriers, risk of business failure, secluding Indigenous peoples into “silos”, and discouraging individual entrepreneurship. The report also finds that many successful co-ops are located in remote areas that encourage community members to work together to solve challenges, particularly in Northern communities. In this context, the authors conclude that the co-operative model needs to be adapted to satisfy the economic, cultural, and self-sustaining needs of Indigenous peoples.

Vannucci, Delfina, and Richard Singer. 2010. Come Hell Or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry. California: AKPress.

Delfina Vannucci and Richard Singer offer an insightful exploration of the challenges and pitfalls of egalitarian group processes. The authors argue that traditional (hierarchical) group structures often stifle creativity, alienate participants, reproduce societal inequalities, and/or represent the views and decisions of a select few. Egalitarian processes offer a powerful contrast to traditional models because they allow individuals to actively shape the decisions and actions of the group, and because they embody the ideals of mutual respect, inclusion, and shared responsibility. While not exclusively a how-to guide, the handbook does offer practice examples and advice for those interested in alternative governance models. Additionally, another critical contribution this handbook makes is with regards to its discussion of the baggage individuals bring with them, even in collectives. Thus, rather than position collectives on a pedestal, the authors discuss how power dynamics, personal biases, and poor communication can undermine collectives. For instance, it discusses the emergence of informal hierarchies, where individuals or factions accumulate power through tactics like withholding or hoarding information, undermining or minimising the value of knowledge that arises when people from diverse backgrounds participate in collectives, or by treating individuals who raise objections or dissent as disruptive inconveniences. To address such issues, the authors advocate for documenting processes, such as decision-making frameworks and procedures for raising grievances, as well as defining what it means to participate in a collective, along with expectations regarding this participation.

Winter, Caroline, Tyler Fontenot, Luis Meneses, Alyssa Arbuckle, Ray Siemens, and the ETCL and INKE Research Groups. 2020. “Foundations for the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Commons: Exploring the Possibilities of Digital Research Communities.” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory 2. https://popjournal.ca/issue02/winter.

Winter et al. introduce the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons, an open online space where Canadian humanities and social sciences researchers and stakeholders can gather to share information and resources, make connections, and build community. Situated at the intersection of the fields of digital scholarship, open access, digital humanities, and social knowledge creation, the Canadian HSS Commons is being developed as part of a research program investigating how a not-for-profit, community-partnership research commons could benefit the humanities and social sciences community in Canada. This paper considers an intellectual foundation for conceptualizing the commons, its potential benefits, and its role in the Canadian scholarly publishing ecosystem. Additionally, it explores how the Canadian HSS Commons’ open, community-based platform complements existing research infrastructure serving the Canadian humanities and social sciences research community.

Knowledge Production, Archives, and Digital Sustainability

Barats, Christine, Valérie Schafer, and Andreas Fickers. 2020. “Fading Away... The Challenge of Sustainability in Digital Studies.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 14 (3).

This paper examines the challenges of sustaining digital data and projects in three stages of research: data collection, data analysis, and knowledge dissemination. Drawing from interviews with French social sciences and humanities scholars, the authors argue that there is a tension between long-term data preservation and the short life cycles of platforms and infrastructures. The challenges found were the diversity of approaches and instability of digital data collection, the lack of time and resources for maintaining research data, the quick obsolescence of digital tools, and the loss of context of the data. The authors conclude that these challenges are not only technical but also related to the institutional contexts and epistemic traditions in which digital studies take place.

Black, Laura W., Howard T. Welser, Dan Cosley, and Jocelyn M. DeGroot. 2011. “Self-Governance Through Group Discussion in Wikipedia: Measuring Deliberation in Online Groups.” Small Group Research 42 (5): 595–634. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411406137.

Black et al. analyze how deliberative were the online group discussions that shaped the Wikipedia policy of no personal attacks. Using content and network analysis, the authors found that group members in these discussions provided a great deal of information and proposed solutions, but they usually replied by finding faults with them. Despite this tendency, in 21% of the threads, users built on one another’s solutions, asked for feedback and responded to each other’s comments, demonstrating the potential of wiki environments for collaborative work and open deliberation. The authors conclude that the case of Wikipedia could serve as a model for other online communities to collaboratively develop policies to govern their own communities.

Borgman, Christine L., Andrea Scharnhorst, and Milena S. Golshan. 2019. “Digital Data Archives as Knowledge Infrastructures: Mediating Data Sharing and Reuse.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 70 (8): 888–904. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24172.

Borgman et al. analyze the role of digital data archives as mediators between data contributors, data consumers, and data curators. Through a case study of the Data Archiving and Networked Services Institute (DANS) of the Netherlands, the authors explain who are the contributors and consumers of this archive and why they use it, as well as the role of archivists in acquiring, curating, and disseminating data. The findings show that there are a few large contributors that consistently provide content, while most academic researchers share their data infrequently and privately. Consumers are a diverse group that rarely overlap with contributors; they mostly use data sets for general information about a problem but do not tend to use them to create new knowledge products. Archivists, as the human infrastructure of DANS, develop and maintain relationships with different stakeholders to identify, acquire, curate, and sustain access to data sets, but this labour is often invisible.​​ The authors conclude that DANS mediates access to data through its human, technical, and policy infrastructure, with the most obvious mediation happening between contributors and consumers.

Drucker, Johanna. 2021. “Sustainability and Complexity: Knowledge and Authority in the Digital Humanities.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36 (2): ii86–ii94. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab025.

For Drucker, sustainability in the digital humanities is not just a technical or logistical problem but a reflection of the deeper relationship between knowledge production, authority, and the cultural frameworks that govern digital scholarship. Drawing on a mixture of anecdotal case studies, Drucker places sustainability within a broader epistemic context, focusing on its entanglement with complexity. Drucker argues for the need to go beyond thinking about sustainability solely in terms of the maintenance of existing projects or systems and instead consider how we can ensure that the knowledge production processes can endure across time and institutional changes, while adapting to technological and cultural shifts. For instance, environmental concerns (e.g., ecological impact and energy consumption), societal concerns (e.g., unethical labour and unsafe working environments), and intellectual concerns (e.g., the longevity of knowledge systems and the preservation of intellectual labour) are all critical when considering sustainability in the digital humanities. Throughout the article, Drucker emphasizes the need for humanistic methods and ethical principles to guide decisions about the future of digital scholarship, highlighting how the cultural authority of knowledge is at stake in discussions of sustainability.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2024. “Open Infrastructures for the Future of Knowledge Production.” Montreal, Canada, June 17. https://doi.org/10.25547/6GG1-7B37.

In this keynote presentation, Fitzpatrick argues that the future of knowledge production depends on the openness of the infrastructure that supports academic work. Building upon the recommendations of the 20th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, she emphasizes the importance of hosting open access research on open infrastructure that is community-led and accountable to researchers. As an example of an open, community-led initiative, Fitzpatrick describes the work of the Knowledge Commons publishing infrastructure, which she leads. However, she warns that Knowledge Commons relies on Amazon Web Services for functioning, which causes a dependence on a private infrastructure that is unaccountable to its users, similar to the private publishers that seek to control scholarly communication. To counter this dependence, Fitzpatrick suggests building partnerships among higher education institutions to develop their own community-led cloud computing systems to support open access infrastructure.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2018. Generous Thinking. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://generousthinking.hcommons.org.

Fitzpatrick ruminates on the current state of academia with a focus on dominant trends toward competition, individualism, and weakening public support. She argues that a substantial shift is required in order to reinstate public trust and build relationships with the larger communities that universities are a part of. Moreover, Fitzpatrick suggests that making scholarship available is a foundational step in collaborating with others, in line with the community engagement for which she advocates throughout the book. Overall, Fitzpatrick argues that such a transition requires an embrace of listening over telling, of care over competition, and of working with the public rather than in isolation and insulation—in short, it requires the generous thinking (and actions) of the book’s title.

Hegarty, Kieran. 2024. “Web Archives after Platformization: Reading Social Media Collections along the Archival Grain.” Information, Communication & Society 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2024.2420033.

Hegarty examines the impact of the platformization of the web on the selection, preservation, and access of social media content available in web archives. The two main approaches for preserving social media data (web crawling and API-based collecting) are constrained by the platforms’ legal and technical limits to collecting and redistributing content hosted in them. Web crawling offers immediate access to the collections and finds way around platform restrictions but the data is usually incomplete or inconsistent, while API-based approaches allow to collect more data but platforms limit the type of data that can be collected and forbid immediate access to the public. These constraints illustrate how platform design and policies influence the content that can be preserved in web archives. To understand the platformized web’s logics, Hegarty suggests reading these social media archives along the archival grain, which entails reading the inconsistencies in web archives as a history of shifting power relations between public and private interests in the production, distribution, and use of information on the web.

Hensher, Martin, Katie Kish, Joshua Farley, Stephen Quilley, and Katharine Zywert. 2020. “Open Knowledge Commons versus Privatized Gain in a Fractured Information Ecology: Lessons from COVID-19 for the Future of Sustainability.” Global Sustainability 3. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.21. 

In this intelligence briefing, Hensher, Kish, Farley, Quilley, and Zywert explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed serious problems, both for the public and for researchers, with the ways that knowledge is currently produced, shared, protected, and monetized. They argue that open knowledge commons are essential to global efforts to address these problems and their root causes. In the process, their briefing bridges the fields of health and medical sciences, information studies, sustainability, and information policy, with particular attention to conversations about COVID-19 and intellectual property, knowledge scarcity, and misinformation. However, the authors are equally concerned with other problems that are already apparent alongside—or that may emerge in the wake of—COVID-19. They advocate for open, publicly funded research and knowledge commons as the most promising means of improving global responses to such crises.

Kostakis, Vasilis. 2010. “Peer Governance and Wikipedia: Identifying and Understanding the Problems of Wikipedia’s Governance.” First Monday, March. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v15i3.2613.

Kostakis explores the governance issues on Wikipedia regarding the type of contents the site should include. This internal struggle has two visions: inclusionists (who support the development of a broad range of Wikipedia articles) and deletionists (who think Wikipedia should be more selective and avoid trivial topics). Based on interviews with ex-Wikipedians, the author finds that there is a need to reform the clarity of Wikipedia’s rules and conflict resolution process for content disputes, as this struggle over which content to include is detrimental to the project.

Rashidian, Nushin. 2019. “Friend and Foe: The Platform Press at the Heart of Journalism.” Columbia Journalism Review, November 22, 2019. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/the-platform-press-at-the-heart-of-journalism.php/.

Rashidian discusses the end of the “platform era” in journalism, brought on in part by the growing realisation of publishers that sustainability over the long-term necessitates a return to valuing and prioritizing relationships with readers. Rashidian also reports that publishers shared how platform companies failed to deliver on their original promises to bring in additional advertising revenue that would make it worthwhile for publishers to forfeit their audience relationships and editorial control. As the “platform era” fades, publishers are now focusing on rebuilding their autonomy, emphasizing their own properties and revenue streams over platform-dependent reach. Findings from the report also emphasize the importance of maintaining control over distribution channels and preserving the integrity of audience relationships, which may resonate with those interested in questions related to how best to support open access and public knowledge commons initiatives without compromising quality or independence.

Ringel, Sharon, and Rivka Ribak. 2024. “Platformizing the Past: The Social Media Logic of Archival Digitization.” Social Media + Society 10 (1): 20563051241228596. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241228596.

Ringel and Ribak examine how digitization processes of archival materials tend to follow a social media logic, causing a platformization of national memory. The authors develop a case study of the National Library of Israel digitization efforts to explore how four interconnected elements of social media logic manifest in archival digitization: programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication. In this case, programmability manifests in the prioritization of certain records on the website without clear criteria; the content to be digitized is selected based on a popularity criterion that will gather the most interest from a mass audience; connectivity unifies multiple archives under a single portal and access point, homogenizing the archives and the users; and datafication informs the materials to be digitized based on a curation process by the library. The authors conclude that social media logic is embedded in public heritage institutions, shaping future memory even before the content for digitizing is selected.

Scholz, R. Trebor. 2023. Own This! How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet. London New York: Verso.

“Own This!” could be read as a call-to-action, blueprint, and critique of digital platforms and its structurations of labour and life. From the outset of the book, Scholz argues that the labour required to sustain digital platforms is typically provided by migrant workers who receive little pay, virtually no protections, or benefits—all while billions of dollars accumulate in the “bank accounts of Silicon Valley executives” (2). Viewing this issue as intertwined with efforts to reclaim public control over the Internet, its apps, and its protocols, Scholz presents ‘platform cooperatives’ as an alternative. Platform cooperatives blend platforms with the principles of cooperatives (namely, shared ownership and democratic decision-making) in order to gain greater control over the provision of their labour and secure fairer, safer, and more equitable working conditions. The book has eight chapters, including the introduction and epilogue. The first two chapters focus on making the case for cooperatives, and Scholz makes a concerted effort to highlight real-world examples of cooperatives throughout. They also offer an introduction and review of the principles underpinning cooperatives that may be helpful to those who have only a passing familiarity with the concept of cooperatives. The third and fourth chapter consider issues of scale and definitions of value from the perspective of platform cooperatives. Scholz’s discussion of expanding theories of social good beyond economic indicators to others that include collective and individual well-being, as well as equity and sustainability, may resonate with readers who are interested in discussions regarding scholarly impact and the value of open access research. The fifth chapter considers partnerships, including those between unions and cooperatives, and the sixth chapter focuses on data–data commons, data democracy, and liberating data from private interests. The last chapter presents a vision of a near-future (2035) where cooperatives thrive and cities form alliances. In the epilogue, Scholz addresses the question of how to start a platform cooperative, offering some practical tips and points for further consideration.

Tucker, Joanna. 2022. “Facing the Challenge of Digital Sustainability as Humanities Researchers.” Journal of the British Academy, 10: 93–120. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/010.093.

Tucker argues that one of the fundamental challenges that researchers in the humanities face when discussing sustainability is that understanding of what ‘sustainability of digital resources’ actually means differs significantly depending on who is present during the discussion. As such, Tucker proposes researchers in the humanities consider, as a collective, what sustainability means in practice. Four critical aspects of sustainability in practices are proposed by Tucker for further consideration (technological, financial, environmental, and human). For instance, technological sustainability might involve the long-term management of digital tools and resources, whereas financial sustainability may be concerned with long-term funding and the cost of sustaining ongoing updates. Environmental sustainability, on the other hand, could involve mitigating the demands of sufficient data storage and digital infrastructure, as well as the energy and footprint needed. Lastly, the human aspect of sustainability could comprise the people who create, maintain, and use digital resources, since digital projects depend on the labour, skills, and knowledge of individuals and communities. Finally, Tucker argues humanities researchers must be more actively engaged in conversations regarding sustainability, rather than viewing these conversations as external to the discipline and/or their projects. To this point, Tucker suggests that participating in conversations about sustainability–even those happening in ‘other’ disciplines–be considered a core aspect of digital scholarship in the humanities.