EN
The paper analyses the recent policy relating to open access publication as a requirement of funding councils and future research excellence assessments. This is considered in the context of the way in which the university and the researcher have been reconfigured by and for the knowledge economy. Open access is explored in relation to both the opening up of the university and its constituent functions and the way in which new technologies and social media are constitutive of the researcher to explore how practices of visibility and transparency operate in modes of governing and self-governing. The principle of making research accessible to the public through open access publication opens the question of how the public is understood in this relationship. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour a distinction is drawn between publication as making visible and publication as making public.