See also:
- academic search tools (doc)
- My academic search kit (tweet)
I have this note on my profile on ResearchGate and Academia.edu, citing to Tanczer et al. (2019):
I study conceptions of searching and shared searching practices. Recent quote that inspired me: Lucas Melgaço & David Lyon in Surveillance and the Quantified Scholar: A Critique of Digital Academic Platforms: “Even those aware of surveillance capitalism may in many cases surrender to surveillance culture. Indeed, the two authors of this essay both have profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate and are users of different for-profit productivity platforms.” (in: Tanczer, Leonie Maria et al. (2019) Online Surveillance, Censorship, and Encryption in Academia. International Studies Perspectives, doi: 10.1093/isp/ekz016)
I share these not for individualized or reactive quantification but for connection. See Pardo-Guerra (2022, p. 26):
In this adjudication, I argue that the problem posed by quantification is fundamentally the way it triggers reactivity: it is not the quantification per se, but the way disciplines collectively deal with the individualization of scholars’ professional worth. Having studied the practice and its implications for social science, I insist on the importance of rethinking our vocation, moving beyond devotion to scholarship as a calling toward devotion centered on academia as a lived, shared, multidimensional form of labor.
See also the older sample chapter version (inc. a tweet here).
And here, from his final chapter, Solidarities, ¶ in pp. 190-191:
Numbers can be equally liberating and oppressive. [ . . . ] Our unwillingness to reclaim imagination is our collective sin.
Reclaiming imagination is a centerpiece of my research, see the pull quote from Safiya Noble at my home page:
I work to defamiliarize and reimagine web search. [ . . . ]
As Noble (2018, pp. 181–182) writes:
Indeed, we can and should imagine search with a variety of other possibilities. [ . . .] Such imaginings are helpful in an effort to denaturalize and reconceptualize how information could be provided to the public vis-à-vis the search engine. [emphases added]
Back to Pardo-Guerra (2022), see also the final sentence in the penultimate paragraph, p. 194:
Why choose a vocation of the individual when we can build one of solidarity?
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression how search engines reinforce racism. New York University Press. https://nyupress.org/9781479837243/algorithms-of-oppression/ [noble2018algorithms]
Pardo-Guerra, J. P. (2022). The quantified scholar: How research evaluations transformed the british social sciences. Columbia University Press. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-quantified-scholar/9780231197816 [pardoguerra2022quantified]
Tanczer, L. M., Deibert, R. J., Bigo, D., Franklin, M. I., Melgaço, L., Lyon, D., Kazansky, B., & Milan, S. (2019). Online Surveillance, Censorship, and Encryption in Academia. International Studies Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekz016 [tanczer2019online]