I attended an excellent SPARC OpenCon Librarian Community call on August 10th about publishers, namely Elsevier, Thomson Reuters and Clarivate among others, who have transitioned their revenue streams over the past 30 years from selling published content to selling data products built upon proprietary systems and surveillance technologies. Data tracking in research: aggregation and use or sale of usage data by academic publishers, a white paper from DFG/German Research Foundation, describes the current situation: data tracked, collected and analyzed to develop new businesses to sell data about knowledge and to develop new services on existing platforms. However, data profiles about individuals and institutions could be created, potentially threatening data privacy and independent governance. Tracking tools are ubiquitous. The report also details three types of data mining: third-party data through micro-targeting, bidstream data and port tracking, and publisher spyware. Data is aggregated from different sources (think ScienceDirect, Twitter, Google and Facebook) to create user profiles. There are many reasons to be alarmed by this, including the inaccuracy of the data assigned to people and the chilling effect on academic freedom.
