The central idea across these works is that contemporary knowledge is produced inside infrastructures that are never neutral. Platforms, identifiers, open access systems, cognitive labour, disability technologies, scholarly publishing and open science policies all promise connection, circulation and participation. Yet each of them also organizes power. The question is therefore not whether a system is open, digital, collaborative or innovative. The question is what kind of relations it produces: who becomes visible, who is captured, who can act, who is measured, who is excluded, and who controls the protocols of circulation. The first iconic idea is infrastructure as recognition. DOI, ORCID and ROR show that knowledge needs stable identifiers to move across systems without losing authorship, affiliation and accountability. Metadata becomes active connective tissue. Suber’s open access extends this recognition into circulation: research fulfils its public value when it can be read, cited, reused and built upon. Yet Mirowski complicates the promise.

Open science can become platform capitalism when openness is used to reorganize science around metrics, competition, data extraction and market-friendly governance. Openness is therefore not automatically emancipatory. It must be judged by its ownership structures, institutional effects and political economy. The second iconic idea is platformization. Helmond shows how platforms extend into the web by decentralizing features while recentralizing data. The interface appears connective, but the data flow returns to the platform. This logic resonates with cognitive capitalism. Vercellone shows that knowledge, cooperation and general intellect become central productive forces while remaining captured by capital. Lazzarato and Berardi deepen this by moving from knowledge to subjectivity itself. Immaterial labour extracts value from communication, culture, attention and cooperation; the soul at work describes how affect, desire, speed and psychic availability become productive material. Contemporary labour is therefore infrastructural and intimate at the same time. The third iconic idea is crip technoscience. Hamraie and Fritsch shift the entire field of design and technology by treating disabled people as makers, hackers and theorists of everyday life. This matters because the dominant digital and economic systems often measure bodies through productivity, speed, independence and efficiency. Crip technoscience proposes another grammar: interdependence, access, alteration, friction, care and world-remaking. It shows that technology can be redesigned from the standpoint of bodies that dominant infrastructures misrecognize. Together, these works define a critical map of the present. Open access must be joined to infrastructure. Infrastructure must be joined to critique. Platforms must be read as political architectures. Cognitive labour must be read as affective capture. Metadata must be read as recognition. Technoscience must be read from disability justice. The combined lesson is sharp: contemporary systems do not simply distribute knowledge; they shape subjects, bodies, institutions and futures. The task is to build infrastructures where access, autonomy, plurality, care and accountability can survive the pressures of capture.

Paul, S. (2026) ‘Beyond Metadata: The Role of DOI, ORCID, and ROR in Shaping Transparent and Interoperable Library Systems’.

Suber, P. (2012) Open Access. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Berardi, F. ‘Bifo’ (2009) The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Helmond, A. (2015) ‘The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready’, Social Media + Society, 1(2), pp. 1–11.

Vercellone, C. (2007) ‘From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism’, Historical Materialism, 15(1), pp. 13–36.

Mirowski, P. (2018) ‘The Future(s) of Open Science’, Social Studies of Science, 48(2), pp. 171–203.

Lazzarato, M. (2016) ‘Immaterial Labor’, OnCurating, 30, pp. 78–88.

Hamraie, A. and Fritsch, K. (2019) ‘Crip Technoscience Manifesto’, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5(1), pp. 1–34.