Global Biases in Research Metrics: A fundamental challenge to knowledge equity

Corporate ownership of research infrastructure is an important aspect of open research that can often be overlooked and underpins systemic bias that privileges Western academic practice.
The countries where the world’s ‘top’ academic journals are based, for example, are all in North America, the UK and Western Europe, while the main databases for bibliometric analysis used by most universities are exclusionary in various ways and actively marginalise research from the Global South.
The Knowledge Equity Network and Open Lunch, part of the University of Leeds Libraries proudly teamed up to present this joint event to discuss this issue, as well as potential solutions.
We were joined by two guest speakers, Saurabh Khanna from the University of Amsterdam and Ann Campbell from Digital Science.
Saurabh joined us in his capacity as Assistant Professor of Communication Science and also as Research Affiliate for the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) who provide open source software called Open Journal Systems (OJS) widely used to publish peer reviewed research across the Global South, in 60 languages across 136 countries.
Ann talked about the Dimensions database which, while corporately owned by a parent company based in Germany, is working hard to be more inclusive of global research. They work with African organisations including the Training Centre in Communication (TCC), the National Research Foundation (NRF) and AfricArxiv.