Mastodon over Mammon: towards publicly owned scholarly knowledge

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dc.citation.articleNumber230207
dc.citation.issueNumber7
dc.citation.journalTitleRoyal Society Open Science
dc.citation.volumeNumber10
dc.contributor.authorBrembs, Björn
dc.contributor.authorLenardic, Adrian
dc.contributor.authorMurray-Rust, Peter
dc.contributor.authorChan, Leslie
dc.contributor.authorIrawan, Dasapta Erwin
dc.date.accessioned2024-05-03T15:51:11Z
dc.date.available2024-05-03T15:51:11Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractTwitter is in turmoil and the scholarly community on the platform is once again starting to migrate. As with the early internet, scholarly organizations are at the forefront of developing and implementing a decentralized alternative to Twitter, Mastodon. Both historically and conceptually, this is not a new situation for the scholarly community. Historically, scholars were forced to leave social media platform FriendFeed after it was bought by Facebook in 2006. Conceptually, the problems associated with public scholarly discourse subjected to the whims of corporate owners are not unlike those of scholarly journals owned by monopolistic corporations: in both cases the perils associated with a public good in private hands are palpable. For both short form (Twitter/Mastodon) and longer form (journals) scholarly discourse, decentralized solutions exist, some of which are already enjoying some institutional support. Here we argue that scholarly organizations, in particular learned societies, are now facing a golden opportunity to rethink their hesitations towards such alternatives and support the migration of the scholarly community from Twitter to Mastodon by hosting Mastodon instances. Demonstrating that the scholarly community is capable of creating a truly public square for scholarly discourse, impervious to private takeover, might renew confidence and inspire the community to focus on analogous solutions for the remaining scholarly record—encompassing text, data and code—to safeguard all publicly owned scholarly knowledge.
dc.identifier.citationBrembs, B., Lenardic, A., Murray-Rust, P., Chan, L., & Irawan, D. E. (2023). Mastodon over Mammon: Towards publicly owned scholarly knowledge. Royal Society Open Science, 10(7), 230207. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230207
dc.identifier.digitalmastodon-over-mammon
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230207
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/115563
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherThe Royal Society
dc.rightsExcept where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the terms of the license or beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.titleMastodon over Mammon: towards publicly owned scholarly knowledge
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.publicationpublisher version
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