Digital academic capitalism

Abstract

This article examines the processes involved in the digitalisation of Higher Education. The main aim is to analyse how digital capitalism, governing by digitisation, the power of digital metrics and the academic networks are making changes in the production of academic knowledge and in the academics' professional lives. To explain the digital academic capitalism as the current framework that make compite universities in the global market, we will make a review on concepts that have completely modified the academia rules and culture, such as economy of knowledge, academic capitalism, governing by numbers and the neoliberal rationality of performativity. Next, we will focus on how rankings among universities and accountability systems have become ways of quantified control that have undermined the original purpose of universities. Subsequently, we will analyse the new form of academic capitalism and governing centred on digitisation as a step forward in the change of Higher Education. The most important impact indexes and digital alternative metrics (almetrics) will be revised to understand the new metric culture in the academia. Finally, we will study the role of social academic platforms as “Academia.edu” and “ResearchGate” in the context of digital academic capitalism and its influence in the academic subjects that become quantified and digitalised.