Access Denied: Borders as a barrier to openness in higher education
Borders as Barriers
Can your passport or the country you live in prevent you from being open? Globally, a majority of students and academics are disadvantaged due to the limited travel freedom afforded by their passport and unfavourable currency exchange rates that restrict mobility and research activity. Terms that are used to refer to the countries that these academics belong to include Global South (GS) countries, low or lower-middle income countries, and non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) countries. I will use the term Global South as it is comparatively more inclusive of countries that are disadvantaged due to a combination of passport privilege, income status, and socio-cultural attitudes.
In this post, I argue that academics from higher education institutions in the GS, due to national and institutional policies, are often prevented from openly sharing the knowledge accumulated as a result of the important research they conduct. I will use three examples to highlight the specific areas of higher education where this disadvantage manifests, and offer potential solutions to improve inclusivity and openness. Here, I will examine three aspects of openness: access to open knowledge in a higher education setting, open access to published research, and the ability to share your research openly through conferences.
Example 1: Higher Education Institutions
Kirsty Sheppard’s post on information privilege in higher education touched on an important question: how can the principles of openness be achieved when higher education institutions are exclusive? This post discussed exclusivity in terms of affordability of higher education. In this example, I would like to focus on another aspect of higher education and how it affects openness: accessibility.
Take the example of university rankings. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings publishes an annual ranking of the world’s best universities. For this year, the first lower-middle income country to feature in the list makes an appearance ranked at #251, with every country that appears before on the list classified as upper-middle income or high income. What does this mean for scholars of lower-middle and low-income countries?
Generally, rankings indicate how much the institution contributes to producing knowledge, and the quality of facilities and resources available to students. Presumably, those students who attend higher-ranked institutions have better access to the knowledge produced, and are in a better position to network with the researchers who have produced this knowledge. Moreover, with better funding (another criterion that is marked in these rankings) comes better access to learning materials.
Entrance to those institutions in GS countries that are highly ranked would be competitive, since there are very few institutions which meet this criteria. This then leads to the option of migrating to a Global North country which has a higher proportion of highly ranked institutions. However, due to the financial and cultural barriers that migrant scholars face, it would be difficult to become affiliated to a high-ranking Global North institution unless you have certain socioeconomic privileges that facilitate migration. Therefore, it can be argued that GS scholars often have to restrict themselves to those institutions where access to knowledge is limited.
Open educational resources are one way to bridge the gap between scholars in GS and Global North countries. These educational resources are open to educators and students alike, and can be revised, remixed and reused to suit the local, cultural, or linguistic context of the institution. Open Yale Courses are one good example of this — these courses include recordings, the syllabus and other course material. Repositories of free e-books, such as Project Gutenberg, provide access to books that may otherwise be unavailable for those living in a country without access to a public library system or a university affiliation. Partnerships between higher education institutions or education platforms and GS universities can provide an ideal mix of local expertise and knowledge with international resources — an example of this is the MOOC by Stellenbosch University in South Africa, in partnership with the UK-based company FutureLearn. Making knowledge open in this way provides valuable information — if not a marketable qualification — for those from GS countries who otherwise would not be able to access highly ranked institutions and the information they possess. However, it should be noted that institutional ranking is not the only factor that can disadvantage scholars from the GS.
The major issue with open access projects such as these is dependence on stable electricity and Internet, which is inaccessible for many in the GS. This digital divide can exacerbate inequalities within countries; GS scholars from a more socioeconomically advantaged background gain better access to open knowledge, thus facilitating upward mobility. Similarly, open knowledge that is published only in the English language fails to live up to the promise of being an equaliser, as many in the GS face barriers in learning English as a second language. This highlights the responsibility of local organisations, especially those higher education institutions within the GS, that have the infrastructure and resources required to provide locally and linguistically appropriate resources. On a larger scale, it speaks to the importance of improving access to digital technology in GS countries to promote openness in higher education.
Example 2: Access to Journals
In her post on privilege and open access, Padma discussed how OA publishing can be harmful to researchers, especially those from developing countries. My experience as a GS scholar resonated with what was discussed in this post.
During my undergraduate and master’s degree programmes in India (classified as a lower-middle income country), I struggled to access articles. My undergraduate college had no institutional subscription at all, and learning was dependent entirely on outdated, physical copies of textbooks in the library. Submitting an undergraduate thesis was optional, and those who chose to do this were dependent on a limited set of open-access articles to include in their thesis. In short, I graduated with very little idea of how the academic publishing industry worked. My master’s programme, funded by a government-run university, had a comparatively higher number of resources. I finally had the privilege of an institutional subscription, and with that came the skills required to understand and analyse a journal article. This institution also had another privilege — a large number of alumni in Global North countries who could access articles for free and send them to us. However, this is where I observed the second barrier that GS scholars face when it comes to journal publications: submitting their research to journals.
Concerns about the research plan, potential collaborators, etc are often discussed when developing an idea for a paper in the UK. In India, I watched as the second-year master’s students and PhD students made complicated lists comparing the publishing fee to journal prestige ratio. It was often the latter that had to be compromised, which in turn negatively affected their applications to study or work in higher education institutions abroad. There were limited institutional funds and grants to support publication in more “prestigious” journals. What meagre funds we had were paid in Indian rupees, a far weaker currency compared to the US dollar or British pound that most journals charged. The failure of Indian scholars to publish in these international journals was therefore not a reflection on the quality of their work, but rather a testament to the structural limitations placed upon them due to their nationality.
Solutions to this have been proposed. India’s “one nation, one subscription” journal access plan was discussed by Prem Ranjan in a post on research dissemination. The goal of this subscription plan is to set up nationwide subscriptions, as compared to negotiating agreements at institutional-level for articles only members of that institution can access. As Prem mentions, this is not a long-term solution. It would not address the fundamental challenge that GS scholars face, which is the question of the entity responsible for paying the prohibitive article processing charge. An argument can be made that the institutions and public government funds of GS countries are already under strain, and therefore cannot reasonably be expected to pay these fees that ultimately benefit journals that are predominantly based in the Global North. Preprints are another solution that was mentioned by the same author. Offering the advantage of being citable, preprints allow research output to be circulated to a wider audience, without the systemic barriers imposed by article processing charges. However, they may also create an additional barrier, as some journals do not allow, or impose restrictions, on the publication of articles that have already been published as preprints. Preprints are also considered less reliable, as it does not often go through the stringent checks that is the norm for peer-reviewed publication.
What can individual researchers do to support GS scholars who do not have the resources to access or publish in journals? First, quick responses to email requests for papers from scholars in the GS can make these articles available to them, so they do not have to resort to less legal means of accessing articles. Second, researchers can cite unpublished, grey research material (such as theses, dissertations, conference proceedings) and preprints in their articles. Using websites such as ProQuest and OpenGrey to identify unpublished material provides recognition to the work of scholars who may not have had the opportunity to publish these findings due to their financial circumstances. It is also good practice to include grey literature, as data that go unpublished often provide valuable detail and may help avoid publication bias. Third, it is important to be aware of the unique challenges that GS scholars face when it comes to accessing and publishing their research, open-access or otherwise. It is necessary to keep these challenges in mind in situations where the scientific output produced by a GS scholar has to be weighed against scholars who are based in the Global North.
Example 3: Conferences
Conferences are an important part of higher education. These events provide an opportunity for researchers to network and advance their career by demonstrating engagement through speaking and presenting. Openness is central to conferences; conferences are often the place where new research comes to light, an opportunity for ideas and new knowledge to be shared between experts and novices alike. Attendees gain access to valuable material from their research field through presentations and posters that may not always be published later. Additionally, the abstracts and recordings often contain a wealth of information that would otherwise not be available.
But are conferences open to everyone? Academic and non-academic articles alike share the opinion that research conferences are more openly accessible if you have certain characteristics — a high-ranking passport that allows visa-free access to almost any country in the world, having a more senior position in an institution, not having caring responsibilities, etc. Although a much higher proportion of the world’s population lives in the GS, most “international” conferences are held in Western countries with restrictive visa regimes, thus preventing GS scholars from sharing their research and preventing them from building collaborations that would facilitate sharing and advancing of knowledge. Scanning the presenter list of most abstract booklets would reveal the dearth of representation from higher education institutions from the GS, despite research showing that improving equitable participation ensures that attendees of all nationalities have access to research from different regions, can engage with diverse viewpoints, and promote discussions that are inclusive of researchers with valuable culture-specific knowledge.
Online conferences, which grew in popularity out of necessity during the Covid-19 pandemic, have demonstrated how a model of openness can be embedded into conferences to improve participation and sharing of knowledge — regardless of nationality. Online conferences benefit GS researchers in two ways: eliminating the cost of attending a conference, and removing the logistical barrier of applying for a visa. To ensure that online conferences can facilitate openness, three steps can be taken by conference organisers. First, to assist participants from regions with inconsistent access to electricity and the Internet, organisers can offer a demonstration of the conference platform prior to the event. Second, conference organisers should be mindful of geopolitical restrictions on these software and websites. Distributing content through multiple platforms is necessary to allow academics from countries facing sanctions or online content restrictions to access knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Third, allowing speakers to pre-record their talk can facilitate smooth presentation, both for speakers and listeners facing technical issues. It is recommended that these recordings are made available immediately after the scheduled talk, to facilitate chat rooms where the presenter can answer questions and discuss the talk with attendees synchronously.
Organisers of in-person or hybrid conferences can take two important steps to improve participation of researchers with disadvantaged passports. Conferences can apply different bands of registration fees depending on the nationality and residence of attendees, with those from the poorest countries paying the least to register. Nationality is an important factor to consider, since researchers may be resident in a wealthy, Western country, but may still face the financial burden of applying for a visa to enter another country due to their nationality. The second, more radical step would be for conference organisers to hold conferences in countries that rank highly for “openness”, as judged by the number of nationalities the country will accept without a visa. This would allow a larger number of attendees to attend, since it eliminates the cost and time required to apply for a visa. However, this may not be an attractive option to organisers due to the barriers associated with holding a conference in a country that requires more safety planning and risk assessment. A more disheartening reason for organisers to ignore this solution is the harsh reality that most conferences are designed to ensure that attendees can use this as an opportunity to vacation in the country. In such circumstances, it would be rather optimistic to expect major international conferences to shift their destination from the United States or Germany to countries such as Samoa or the Maldives.
Looking Ahead
As a researcher holding a passport issued by a GS country, there is much to be hopeful for. However, I do have to confess that my passport has been the most important factor that has made me reconsider a career in academia, as I’m sure is the case for other early career researchers in such a position. In a world with increasingly restrictive borders, it would be highly optimistic to hope for radical policy changes to improve academic mobility at the national level. Nevertheless, there seems to be better awareness about issues faced by researchers such as myself, and fellow academics with better passports have stepped up to take actions to make opportunities available and accessible for their colleagues from the GS. To conclude this post, and for those wondering how they can extend their support to colleagues with less mobility privilege, I leave this picture from Eleanor MacPherson, international research practice advisor at the University of Glasgow.
