Open access platforms, such as those provided through Reclaim Hosting’s domain-of-one’s-own (Groom et al., 2019), hold potential to change the nature of academic work, expand audiences for academic writing, and shift the impact of academic thought (Lupton et al., 2018). Open scholarship in a PhD program is specifically challenging as novice academics fluidly navigate new domains of thought as they solidify not only theoretical frameworks (ontologies, epistemologies) and conceptual frameworks (methodology, methods) (Farrow et al., 2020), but acquire critical digital literacies (Cronin, 2020) essential to navigate current open scholarly contexts.

Crystallization, a process occurring when a liquid cools and hardens to create a stable material, also describes a creative research continuum that resists binaries and boundaries by viewing and reflecting knowledge through multiple forms of representation, organization, and analysis (Ellingson, 2009). As a novice scholar and PhD candidate, the presenter will showcase a crystallization approach as they openly share their reflexive self through their ‘domain-of-one’s-own’ blog site, Scalar portfolio site, and Hypothes.is annotations used for academic feedback as peer review.

This reflective practice presentation will offer contributions as a descriptive account of open learning through scholarship practice under Theme 3: Open in Action. The conference session will be shared using the presenter’s own Domains blog site and integrate opportunities to openly and collaboratively annotate, using both public and private channels in the web annotation tool called Hypothes.is, along with the presenter’s Scalar portfolio site and the presentation site. Through active engagement with content on these selected web locations, the participants will enhance this presentation. As a result, the presenter’s academic self will continue to crystallize through conversations with session participants. As described by Ellingson (2009), this presenter’s academic self will crystallize in both integrative and dendritic ways – in a process of layering, patching, juxtaposing, dispersing and celebrating knowledge that is “inevitably situated, partial, constructed, multiple, and embodied” (Ellingson, 2009, p. 13). Despite the challenges in higher education, where complexity and ambivalence abound (Lupton et al., 2018, p. 16), and issues of public visibility and bias toward self-promotion are real and felt, this presenter will share crystallizations that continue to “reflect externalities and refract within” as this novice academic navigates toward the dissertation. As Cronin (2020) suggests, “all should have the capacity and agency with which to manage their own personal interplay of openness and closedness” (p. 18), which holds true for all scholars, but especially new scholars who are open to being open in scholarship.