Open Science in practice 4S EASST conference Barcelona, Sept 1st 2016

Open Science (OS) is currently regarded as the next ‘big thing’ in European science policy and elsewhere. It is defined as science that is transparent, accountable, and shareable, involving the participation of (all) relevant stakeholders in the scientific process. In practice, tensions are emerging in how OS is enacted by scientific communities, science policy organisations, funding bodies, the publishing industry, and science-related institutions, with diverse uptakes of commons, knowledge sharing, democratisation of technology, participatory design, hacking etc.

This conference stream invited STS scholars to explore OS from an STS perspective and to discuss what STS can bring into the broader discussion of OS, e.g. by studying institutionalizations of OS, appropriations of OS within prevailing traditional images of science, or how OS is co-shaped by negotiation processes promoted by different stakeholders. Presentations covered socio-technical dimensions of openness in sciences - including the social sciences and humanities - in general and Open Access, Open Research Data, Open Methods, Open Education, Open Evaluation, and Citizen Science in particular.

(Session reports by chairs)

Debating SciHub

In a recent article
https://thewinnower.com/papers/3489-signal-not-solution-notes-on-why-sci-hub-will-not-open-access
Ernesto Priego assembles positions towards the platform SciHub, where otherwise paywalled papers are rerouted and can be downloaded for free. He reminds us that this practice is just a repetition without a strong difference of the predominating publishing system, and certainly not the right step towards Open Access as a movement.

"Sharing content that has not been originally licensed openly, Sci-Hub is a short-cut, a workaround, that distributes scholarly content in a form not intended by its authors, let alone its original publishers." Priego writes.

Even though for most people without access to those papers SciHub provides a solution urgently needed - and this is also the reason why we love this service - it is not an overall solution to the problem of access to knowledge - on the contrary: it is extending the hegemony of traditional knowledge distribution.

Priego quotes Benjamin: "As Walter Benjamin would write of translation (1923) and the mechanical reproduction of art (1936), the translation and the copy canonise the original even more (Benjamin 2009). The more researchers pirate paywalled content, the more the paywalled system of scholarly publishing is canonised."

However, the recent social media fuzz about SciHub and its founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, point the discussion to the right issue, and put a little bit of pressure on the publishing houses and policy to create sustainable open access models for the future of knowledge production.

Elbakyan, who is obviously a strong advocate of the idea of rerouting content to make it accessible, is voicing quite rightly the necessity of "liberating" articles from a time before Open Access: 

Sci Hub ‏@Sci_Hub  13h

13 hours ago

@martin_eve @ernestopriego I would like to point that Sci-Hub provides access to many articles published well before OA was widely known

From a Science and Technology Studies standpoint this debate is very interesting insofar, as it points to the complexity of the current situation, and the socio-technical configurations that arise within such settings (or co-create them.)

We could start by provoking even further, and asking if SciHub is just another form of "predatory publishing", operating an inverse exploitation model. In any case it is a way of gaming the system, and of bringing the old tradition of sharing papers privately to a new dimension, just like it was done before with music and video.

Disembodying academic (re-)production?

A self-reflexive Game

           

Prior to posting some more theoretic reflections on why Open Science and regimes of individual qualification and evaluation are by large incompatible I would like to propose to you an Open Experiment or Game on the ways in which we make use of the embodiement of scientific output. 

On the "Disruptive" Technologies used in Open Education

This blog entry is an assignment for the seminar Open Science: The Better Science, teached by Prof. Katja Mayer at the Department for Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna. (November, 2015).

By Daniel Marante

Despite all evidence of how MOOCS might be overrated today, how could they actually improve education?

Although there are some down sides of MOOCs, there are also some good elements these alternative education platforms do offer:

1. a-  MOOCs could work as a platform for education that is technical, practical and applied, in which academic rigor and expensive strict peer reviewing are perhaps not so important. Teaching how to give maintenance to an electric motor is probably different than teaching a  language. The pedagogical needs for quantum-computing surely differs from those in criminal law. In this sense, the context of application of these MOOCs should be also considered when trying to sort out whether they could work or not.
   
2. 
   
3. b-  The need to create and deliver on time high quality education in open platforms should be used to distinguish good teachers from bad and good researchers altogether. This would initiate either a requirement for good researchers/bad teachers to learn how to teach in both normal and online platforms, or to diagnose the “real? –on campus- situation” of universities, where crucial pedagogic skills are not to be found.
   

As a more general comment, I sense from the author’s strong standpoint on critiquing MOOCs, that he was expecting MOOC’s to be a prospective candidate that would abolish traditional education, substituting it and improving it. I do realize that selling the platforms as saviors of the developing world education system is maybe too ambitious, but it would be fairer to consider them as an alternative education methodology with particular objectives towards a more authentic open education culture. 

References:

Daniel, J. (2012). Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth,

paradox and possibility. Journal of interactive Media in education,

2012(3). 

Open Cultures and Open Innovation

This blog entry contains an assignment for the seminar Open Science: The Better Science, teached by Prof. Katja Mayer at the Department for Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna. (November, 2015).

By Daniel Marante

- Summarize the Open Innovation model as described by Chesbrough, and locate the role of universities and other public research organization in this model. Reflect briefly in one paragraph potential obstacles, challenges or benefits from this model.


The author highlights the bond between Open Science and Open Innovation. He argues that business is the answer to this gap that currently exists between both ends. He sustains that an entrepreneurial risk-taking model is needed to define the most promising application of science and knowledge. He argues, too, that an Open Science and Open Innovation sustainable model should be based on Mertonian Norms, where CUDOS principles rule the normative standard of action. In particular, Chesbrough argues that open source software, is leading to a “citizen science” era, in which scientific contribution can be truly made, fulfilling at the same time Mertonian principles. Examples of this are to be found in organizations such as CERN. But, the author argues that Open Science does not necessarily imply Open Innovation, because institutions that promote the former sometimes do not work to promote the latter. That is why, different incentives and contexts are needed, but this could be hard since applying knowledge can be ambiguous, involve making judgments and taking risks in unexplored domains. Thus, private sector stood up to undertake knowledge application (instead of basic research) and therefore a model of closed innovation was established.

But nowadays the scenario has changed. The author argues that universities are not only interested in creating knowledge, but in applying it. This has torn down knowledge application monopolies created by industry, while opening a broad way to a better distribution of valuable information. This is clear when looking at patent distribution statistics, where the percentage of patents attributed to individuals and small firms has been increased in comparison to the ones attributed to big players in the industry.

To capitalize this modern era, in terms of a systematic open innovation environment, the author states that abundant knowledge is a must within the model, so inflows and outflows of this knowledge, accelerate internal innovation and expand the markets of application. Such a model also should combine internal and external ideas into platforms and architectures, where business models define the requirements for these systems.

There are two models of open innovation: Outside-in, which involves opening up a company’s innovation process to external inputs (CERN embodies this model) and Inside- out, which are less popular and requires organizations to allow un-explored ideas to go outside the organizations for other to use in their businesses. Such a model would require incentives like collaboration through markets, exchange of knowledge, intellectual property rights and startup formation, that would integrate technologies together into solutions and new systems. Alongside, Universities should function, as the locus for the discoveries and basic research, but within the system is important to delegate the application phase to other experienced actors with business models in mind.

As the author mentions, I wonder how such a model, and particularly the commercialization of ideas issue, would cope with the pervasive for-profit behavior the industry has. How competitiveness would work under such a model. How would it be for consulting industry, for which knowledge is actually their product?


References:
Chesbrough, H. (2015). From Open Science to Open Innovation. Science Business Publishing.