Call for papers for the dossier "Critical Metrics: Representativeness, Access, and Democratization of Data" - Deadline 30/04/2024

This issue of Liinc in Revista addresses the political discussion of information metric studies in their strategic role for representativeness and democratic open access to data. It also encompasses the debate on the production of a public sphere mediated by discursiveness constituted over the numerated layer of networked machines, under the control of big tech companies, which threaten the slow advances of the democratic process.
The central problematization lies in the role of metrics that guide evaluative processes and serve as a means to fuel the automation of society by big capital in the digital environment. This occurs largely due to the informational vulnerability of the Global South in the face of labeling and validation tools wielded by global powers, as well as the plunder and resale of personal data, or even data neocolonialism disguised as global cooperation and openness actions.

Metrics, their theories, and methods are at the root and on the surface of this debate.
In other words, the critical understanding of the political, legal, and social dimensions of the impact: of a science increasingly recorded in non-democratically accessible and auditable environments, of digital networks with all their presence and interference in contemporary life, and of the understanding of metrics as a principle of hegemonic control of capital, needs to be the subject of analysis and scrutiny regarding their potential as a counter-hegemonic praxis for transforming this same reality. Because science and democracies are currently at risk and are intersected by the application and domination of analytical tools from private multinational data collection and control platforms, which use both old and new bibliometric, scientometric, and altmetric methodologies to exponentially expand their power. On the other hand, there are already movements advocating for national, public, and democratic digital platforms as essential conditions for maintaining national sovereignty and strengthening citizenship.

For these reasons, the sea of digits that ranges from the invisibility of academic production in the Global South to the disinvestment in neglected disease research; from algorithmic racism to click farms of epistemicide; from the use of metrics for counter-colonial purposes and reuse for denunciation and the formation of people's autonomy, paves the way for praxeological agendas of resistance and socioscientific activism.

The dossier's perspective is to establish a public arena for the encounter of new problematizations and research results in critical metrics, as well as experiences of metric praxis that seek to dialectically think about bibliometric theories and methods in the universe of data about data mined every second for the alienation of local economies, plural knowledge, diversity of languages, and experiences.
In this context, Liinc opens a call for papers on this theme, which may include, among others, the following topics:

• Critical Metrics of Information;
• Responsible Metrics and Academic Invisibility;
• ltmetrics and Democratization of Indicators;
• Cybermetrics and Technopolitics in the Digital Environment;
• Scientometrics, Scientific Truth, and Denialism;
• Webometrics, Folksonomy, and Communities;
• Data Science and Digital Activism;
• Semantometrics and Multilingualism;
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Indicators in Science.

Coordinators:

• Dr. Fabio Gouveia (Coordinator and Professor of the Graduate Program in Information Science under the cooperation agreement between the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – PPGCI IBICT UFRJ)
• Dr. Ronaldo Ferreira Araújo (Professor of the Graduate Program in Information Science at the Federal University of Alagoas – PPGCI UFAL and the Graduate Program in Knowledge Management and Organization at the Federal University of Minas Gerais – PPGGOC UFMG. Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies – CWTS, Leiden University, Netherlands)

For more information, check the submission guidelines at https://revista.ibict.br/liinc/about/submissions