Keynote: Who Owns Our Knowledge? Scholar-Led Infrastructures and the Future of Publishing
What would happen if Google Scholar were to vanish tomorrow? For many researchers, it has become the default gateway to academic literature, yet its dominance also exposes vulnerabilities in how knowledge is discovered and accessed. This presentation will discuss how the proliferation of open access journals, led by scholars and published out of universities from around the world, is challenging publishing models, reshaping access to knowledge, and redefining the global landscape of scholarly communication. It concludes with a call to strengthen and sustain scholar-led publishing infrastructures—so that access to knowledge is secured by the academic community itself, not left at the mercy of corporate platforms.
When
Friday, October 24, 2025
12:30–2 p.m. (Eastern)
Where
Speaker
Juan Pablo Alperin, Scientific Director of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), and Associate Professor in the Publishing Program and Co-Director of the Scholarly Communications Lab (ScholCommLab), Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Alperin is an established researcher of scholarly communications, known for bringing evidence-based perspectives to pragmatic solutions in support of open access and open science. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed publications and delivered countless presentations on related topics. He also serves on the boards and steering committees of international organizations, including the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) and OpenAlex. His work focuses on making scholarly communication more equitable, inclusive, and publicly engaged, particularly across Latin America and the Global South.