The role of a university is manifold. Being a place where people can find knowledge and the track record how that knowledge was reached is often seen as part of that. Over the past decades universities outsources this role, for example to publishers. This is seeing a lot of discussion and I am happy to see that the Dutch Universities are taking back control fast now. For example, Radboud University (>1k followers) already joined the Fediverse (Mastodon etc), making them independent from non-EU law and commercial interests. Scientific journals, Nobel Prize winners, etc already joined too , btw.

This effort is calling for more universities to go into the direction of open infrastructures. I am looking forward to seeing all Dutch Universities post news on Mastodon, post videos on PeerTube, etc.

Would it not be awesome if the Fediverse would become the new multidimensional knowledge dissemination and peer review system we have all been waiting for?

Update: universities with a Mastodon listed in Wikidata on the world map: https://w.wiki/6zR3

This post was originally posted as https://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/2023/07/universities-and-open-infrastructures.html.