Marianne Noel und Lucile Ottolini (Université Gustave EiffeI, Frankreich)

The last twenty years of open science advocacy and the more recent proliferation of programs and funding have shown that open science has become a veritable mantra. In this communication we deliberately adopt a perspective of the sociology of work and of professions: rather than examining discourses on openness, we focus on the missions, experiences and profiles, as well as the practices, of professionals whose daily work is devoted to ‘opening up’ science. We propose to analyse the opening up of science as a vector of contemporary scientific credibility, implemented by professional communities which are invisible in their daily environment. Drawing on the cases of two groups studied in our respective theses, the one responsible for opening up their institution to society, and the other responsible for opening up publication, our proposal follows the hypothesis of the emergence of a professional category. In total, our empirical material consists of interviews (n=41), and analyses of institutional archives. The data covers a broad period of institutional intervention in France and Sweden (from the early 2000s to late in 2020).

The exercise of comparing the work of ‘opening up’ science involved two groups of professionals of different sizes and with different professional and institutional histories. The comparison has informed us about common competencies and work characteristics (professional profiles, previous professional experience, missions, extensive socialisation spaces, etc). It also highlights differences between the two groups, notably in the extensive use of quantification by open access publishing professionals. “Qualculatory” logics and methods are clearly vectors of credibility for the group of Open Access publishing professionals, but at the time of writing we do not observe the extension of qualculatory, or even commercial, logics in openness to society.

At the time of the survey, the work of opening up remained invisible in institutions. This invisibility allowed both professional groups to develop quietly and to benefit from a considerable autonomy of action within the institutions, therefore be a resource for the work of opening up. While this invisibility was at the service of their profession, in the medium term it nevertheless calls into question the means implemented to ensure the long-term survival of the opening up. Faced with the effects of professionalisation and managerialisation (growing workforce, younger and less experienced professionnals), openness professionals also run the risk of losing the motivation and meaning of their actions, especially when it comes to the ‘sewing’ work that is essential for linking up with the communities they serve. The work of opening up lies somewhere between management, critical analysis, and (measuring) performance, whether in terms of opening up the publication or opening up to society.

*recorded and presented on 04.02.2025

Anna Ahlers (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte)

Zu den interessantesten Entwicklungen im gegenwärtigen globalen Wissenschaftsystem gehört der rasante Aufstieg der Volksrepublik China. Als kollektiver Akteur hat es das Land innerhalb von drei Jahrzehnten geschafft, in allen gängigen wissenschaftlichen Leistungs- und Reputations-Rankings Spitzenplätze einzunehmen. Internationale Reaktionen auf diese Entwicklung sind geprägt von Faszination und – zunehmend – Sorge und Ablehnung. Nicht zuletzt fordert das autoritäre Wissenschaftsmodel der VR China offensichtlich viele landläufige Annahmen und Normen in der OECD-Welt heraus. Auch aus wissenschaftlich-analytischer Perspektive ist der chinesische Fall deshalb äußerst spannend, aber dies hat sich bisher weder in der Sinologie noch in der Wissenschaftsforschung signifikant niedergeschlagen. Der Vortrag stellt die ersten Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe vor, die sich – inspiriert von relativ klassischen Ansätzen der Wissenschaftssoziologie – seit 2020 mit der Dynamik des chinesischen Wissenschaftssystems und seiner globalen Integration beschäftigt. Dies regt abschließend idealerweise eine gemeinsame Diskussion über die Potentiale und die Grenzen von Konzept- und Theoriebildung im komplexen Spannungsfeld von Isomorphismus und Variation (oder Divergenz) in einer derart interdisziplinären empirischen Wissenschaftsforschung an.

*recorded and presented on 22.01.2025

Dimity Stephen (DZHW) und Meta Cramer (RMZ, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

The recent shift in evaluation systems to more diverse quality criteria has increased the visibility of lower quality research, incurring a moral panic about the effects of predatory publishing practices (PPP) on the science system. However, this concern currently lacks empirical substantiation and ignores the complex geopolitical relations, researchers’ motivations, and centre-periphery narrative inherent in the predatory publishing debate. Thus, we propose a mixed-methods approach to answering three questions: i) how have (P)PP in different national settings emerged, ii) how do academic communities define and react to PPPs, and iii) how do evaluation systems influence (P)PPs? Our aim is to elucidate the relationship between evaluation systems and (P)PPs, accounting for the contextual processes of labelling practices as questionable. Our approach combines systematic review, quantitative and bibliometric methods to identify (changing) publishing practices associated with evaluation systems, together with qualitative methods to understand the motivations for these practices in six national systems: Germany, Poland, Portugal, Nigeria, India, and Brazil. In this session, we will present the aims of this project, which began in September 2024, and the methodologies to be used in it.

*recorded and presented on 08.01.2025

Georgia Samaras (Technische Universität München)

The talk explores the epistemic dynamics catalysed by researchers advocating for the clinical relevance of environmental epigenetics in psychiatry. I do so based on an in-depth literature analysis of peer-reviewed research articles and interviews with researchers who conduct epigenetic research in psychiatry. In demonstrating how relevance builds a crucial yet ambivalent bridge between basic research and clinical application, I explore tensions arising in relation to the acceptable level of uncertainty for epigenetic knowledge to be considered relevant. I further trace how epigeneticists aim to counteract emerging problems to their claims about the clinical relevance of epigenetics through performing interdisciplinary, big-data research. Finally, I show that, nonetheless, certain epistemic problems persist and discuss both their roots in the specific epistemic history of psychiatric epigenetics as well as in the systemic pressures to promote relevance early on in emergent research fields. With this talk, I contribute to STS scholarship that explores how modes of relevance feature in different scientific domains. At the same time, my talk contributes to a better understanding of how environmental epigenetics is adopted and adapted in different research fields within biomedicine and how field-specific norms, infrastructures, and societal expectations affect its uptake, articulation, and epistemic development.

*recorded and presented on 11.12.2024

Sven Arend Ulpts (Aarhus University, Denmark)

Research guidelines and the scientific literature in general are full of ideas and recommendations of how proper science should look like. However, it remains an open question how the actual reality of research in the sciences relates to notions of proper or responsible science in, for instance, European research integrity guidelines? To answer this question, I conducted an ethnography of cognitive sciences in five cognitive science labs in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The aim is to understand how and under what conditions knowledge is produced and whether ideas of proper conduct that can be found in guidelines and the literature actually have a place in research reality. Hence, it is about capturing the perspectives of the researchers who are supposed to live in compliance with such guidelines and recommendations. To this end I further inquired what researchers think about how and whether current recommendations for the improvement of science fit into their everyday lives as researchers by conducting semi-structured interviews. Put shortly, I observed a complex mixture of alignment and mismatch between notions of good science and the research realities.

*recorded and presented on 13.11.2024

Thomas Wahl (Mälardalens Universitet, Sweden)