Research Outputs as Testimony & the APC as Testimonial Injustice in the Global South

Abstract

Research outputs are a form of testimony with researchers serving as expert testifiers. Research outputs align with philosophical understandings of testimony, as research represents an everyday, informal communicative act. If research outputs are a form of testimony, they are open to ethical and epistemic critique. The open access (OA) article processing charge (APC) in the Global South serves as an apt topic for this critique. The APC is a financial barrier to publication for Southern researchers, and thus raises problems around epistemic and testimonial injustice. The second half of this paper examines a variety of equity issues in prestige scholarly publishing and OA APCs, which are then more fully illustrated by the development of a hypothetical testimonial injustice case study focused on a researcher working in Latin America. Ultimately, I propose the following argument: If people use journal rankings as a guide to which testimony they should take seriously and the OA APC publishing model systematically excludes researchers from the Global South on non-meritocratic grounds, then the OA APC publishing model contributes to testimonial injustice. This paper is a philosophical, theory-based discussion that contributes to research about equitable systems of scholarship.