XML Workers: The Hidden Actors of Scholarly Communication in Mexico

• In Event: Mapping the Conceptual Vocabulary of AI in the Global South - III

Abstract

One of the main trends in scholarly communication is the digitization of editorial processes and the contents of books and scientific journals. For the science system, the digital native edition represents the possibility of interoperability between different scientific databases and that the contents circulate more efficiently on the internet and can be consumed by wider audiences. Thus, data and metadata are currently the "black gold" in scientific publication because apart from their informative uses, they also serve to generate indicators of scientific production.

However, to achieve this, specialized human resources in data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence are needed that, in many countries of the global south, are not found within the editorial teams, which are produced in universities, which must hire companies to carry out this work.

The main of this paper is to present some preliminary results of my doctoral research on how companies specializing in markup XML (Extensible Markup Language) begin to reconfigure and have a sociotechnical agency in the landscape of scientific publishing in Mexico, a country that has changed since 2016 its public policy instruments for financial support for the publication of scientific journals, which can be spent on the production of XML, a phenomenon that points to a sociotechnical division of scholarly publishing work and the need to propose clear accountability systems for this activity carried out by humans and machines that, although they are not part of the scientific collectives, are beginning to be important actors for the circulation of scientific knowledge.

Author

• NESTOR DANIEL DOMINGUEZ, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco, México