The COVID-19 pandemic, the treatment and death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter and the MeToo movements, and restrictive immigration policies have more recently brought to the forefront the inequities in our everyday lives. From the inequity of access to COVID-19 vaccines across the globe, inequities of the treatment of people of color and women and access to broadband and online information, social justice issues have prompted not only increased media attention but also an increase in scholarly research. “There are five goals of social justice: access to resources, equity (provision of equitable resources that focus on the needs of communities and their members), diversity, participation in policy making by diverse groups, and human rights regardless of socioeconomic status (freedom of speech, voting rights, and other basic rights)” (Connaway and Radford, 2021, 442). These also correspond to the underlying principles of librarianship – access to information and the technology to obtain this information regardless of religion, political affiliation, gender identity, race, or economic and educational levels and intellectual freedom. The digital divide, the disparity between those who have access to technology and those who do not based on educational and economic levels, creates an imbalance of access to information. Equal access to broadband, information, healthcare, education, and socio-economic opportunities are critical issues in engaging social justice in LIS pedagogy and research. Social justice research is not new to the scholarly community, including the library and information science (LIS) community. However, the current social and economic environments have increased the awareness of inequitable practices and policies and the shortcomings of LIS offerings, programming, collections, procedures, and practices. These biases are present in our classification systems, knowledge management, vocabularies, algorithms used for discovery and access, and in our hiring, promotion and retention practices and policies in regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion in an international and development context. Integrating inclusive and equitable policies and practices into the LIS curricula also is imperative for preparing future professionals to meet the continually changing needs of diverse staff and communities. The panelists will discuss how LIS researchers and educators are integrating social justice into their scholarship and teaching, within a context of decolonizing research and advancing multiple ways of knowing. They then will highlight LIS social justice research, methodologies, and frameworks as well as future directions for research. Examples of how these research findings can be translated into LIS curricula will be highlighted. Lynn Silipigni Connaway will provide an overview of some of the social justice research topics being addressed in the LIS literature. She also will discuss ways to include diversity in research sampling and to be more inclusive in our participant recruitment and collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of our findings. Clara M. Chu will introduce the scholarship of dialogue framework for LIS research that engages the voice of the research participants to provide them agency and enhance equity throughout the research process. She will discuss the perils of drive-by and helicopter research when studying the Other, including conducting research in marginalized and Global South communities. Dick Kawooya will discuss information policy research, why it is important, and how to integrate it into LIS curricula. Information policy research provides a unique opportunity to address social justice and inequality because it focuses on identifying social problems associated with information, segments of society affected by the problems, recommends solutions in the form of policy choices and if policy choices are implemented, it informs distribution of public and private resources (Braman, 2011). Information policy research focuses on issues such as the digital divide, library funding (school and public), censorship, privacy, net neutrality, data protection and integrity, intellectual property, and others. He will show why and how the above policy issues should be integrated across the LIS curriculum and which marginalized communities should be the center for each policy issue. Andiswa Mfengu will provide a discussion on socially just research impact assessment support from the LIS discipline. Research and research impact assessment have been greatly transformed over the years and thus providing an opportunity for the LIS discipline to explore equitable and context-sensitive approaches that cater for marginalized groups; and how these approaches can be embedded in LIS scholarship and education. She will discuss challenges and propose solutions on how research impact assessment support from the LIS discipline can be more inclusive, flexible, and equitable in practice and in curricula.
Higher education performance assessment systems are under scrutiny as they are viewed as driving scholarship away from its fundamental purpose which is to recognize and reward scholarship that addresses the questions that matter most to society. This is further perpetuated by university rankings which might be good for the university's image but not for scholarship and involved researchers. Performance assessment indicators used by higher education institutions need to measure impact validly and reliably in different parts of society. A challenge to institutions and funders is to develop a methodology that can enhance quality control and research management and policy on top of equity rather than further exposing marginalized groups to epistemic injustices in these traditional systems. Hence the purpose of this study, which draws from a doctoral study on research impact assessment, is to explore how higher education institutions can use performance assessment to drive research impact in the global South.
Metrics analysis of journal content has become an important point for debate and discussion in research and in higher education. The South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science (SAJLIS), a premier journal in the library and information science (LIS) field in South Africa, in its 85-year history, has had multiple editors and many contributing authors and has published over 80 volumes and 160 issues on a diversity of topics reflective of LIS theory, policy and practice. However, how discoverable and accessible has the LIS scholarship carried by the Journal been to its intended readership? SAJLIS transitioned to open access in 2012 and this new format in scholarly communication impacted the Journal significantly. The purpose of this paper is to report on a multiple metrics analysis of discoverability and accessibility of LIS scholarship via SAJLIS from 2012 to 2017. The inquiry takes a quantitative approach within a post-positivist paradigm involving computer-generated numerical data as well as manual data mining for extraction of qualitative elements. In using such a multiple metrics analysis to ascertain the discoverability and accessibility of LIS scholarship via SAJLIS in the period 2012 to 2017, the study employs performance metrics theory to guide the analysis. We highlight performance strengths of SAJLIS in terms of discoverability and accessibility of the scholarship it conveys; identify possible growth areas for strategic planning for the next 5 years; and make recommendations for further study for a more complete picture of performance strengths and areas for improvement.
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