Short abstract:

New efforts around transformative and open research indicate an emerging realignment between research and societal challenges. Nevertheless, empirical evidence is lacking. We select research communities in open and transformative research and explore how they frame and justify their efforts.

Long abstract:

Universities are presently grappling with how to address complex and rapidly worsening socio-environmental challenges of recent decades. Several research efforts have emerged around Transformative research’. This ‘transformative’ turn builds on similar discussions concerning open science and transformative innovation policy. These developments are indicative of an emerging realignment between research activities and societal challenges. Nevertheless, how transformative and open research is actually taking root remains poorly supported by empirical evidence, particularly in technical universities that are strongly tied to more traditional conceptions of engineering and natural sciences research. This paper seeks to uncover whether and how transformative research is emerging in the research cultures, structures, and practices at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

To better understand the present status of TR at TU/e, we employed a mixed method comprising a bibliometric and a qualitative component. We select research communities and individuals likely to pursue some form of (transformative) sustainability research and explore qualitatively how these communities frame and justify their efforts in the context of the credibility cycle (Latour and Woolgar 1986).

Our results show that TR communities orient themselves towards framing of transformative research emerging in the literature, albeit with diverse focal points, emphasis, and approach to alternatives and the emphasis on technological solutions. Across all communities studied, the rationale mentioned combinations of urgency, complexity, justice, diversity, and curiosity. Transformative research did not stand out as an entirely new goal but rather as a complementary orientation additional to other goals.

Short abstract:

I suggest that open data and open source practitioners at CERN propagate varying anticipations of openness. While open data experts connect openness to a more equitable knowledge generation process, open source practitioners envision their work in terms of efficiency and community growth.

Long abstract:

In academic literature and policy discourses, the area of open science is typically categorized into subdomains such as open access, open data, open source software and open source hardware. This categorization suggests that open science activities can be differentiated in terms of the research objects to be opened up such as publications, data, software or hardware designs.

Based on semi structured interviews with open science practitioners at CERN, I suggest that this separation based on research objects does not hold in practice. For instance, open data practitioners are concerned with more than just releasing research data. They additionally focus on access to various types of analysis software. Similarly, open source activities not only focus on software or hardware designs, but are also concerned with various types of (meta)data. However, what distinguishes these domains are underlying anticipations of openness. While open data projects connect openness to reproducibility and equitable access to knowledge generation, open source practitioners tend to envision their work in terms of usability, efficiency and community growth.

On the level of practice, open science activities are thus not only delineated based on the ontology of the research objects, but based on diverging anticipations of openness. Acknowledging these anticipations could allow for collaboration across open source and open data domains. For instance, community centered visions in open source projects could serve as inspiration for open data endeavors. On the policy level, a discussion of these visions could lead to a more tailored incentivization of open science practices.

Short abstract:

In this paper, we report on the preliminary results of the Socio-Environmental Knowledge Commons (SEEKCommons) project, whose goal is to study, translate, and foster the commons in science and technology.

Long abstract:

“Open Science” technologies—such Free and Open Source scientific software, Open Data, and Open Scientific Hardware—have returned to the forefront of debate concerning the present and future of digital infrastructures. Governments, international agencies, and funding organizations have renewed hope for the purported cross-pollination effects of “Open Science,” promising large-scale collaborations with increased efficacy in the application and reuse of public funds. Yet, skepticism with “openness” has been rampant given the actual and potential cases of corporate enclosure of collective research efforts. In this paper, we report on the preliminary results of the Socio-Environmental Knowledge Commons (SEEKCommons) project, whose goal is to study, translate, and foster the commons in science and technology. In particular, we discuss preliminary results of our study on how researchers, technologists, and community organizations negotiate different understandings and practices of “openness” in the context of socio-environmental research. For the conclusion, we discuss the implications of the “common” as a technopolitical framework that allows for redressing some of the key challenges of “Open Science” concerning the governance and the limits of openness.

Short abstract:

Open science promised a paradigm shift in research practices, but instead has given us a disconnected bag of single-purpose tools, i.e., techno-solutionism in the form of badges, open data & code platforms, etc. We present “Helio” as the missing social component to realizing Open Science.

Long abstract:

Open Science (OS) promised a paradigm shift, a revolution in how we conduct and share science to create a reliable and accessible scientific knowledge base. It delivered techno-solutionism, e.g., open data, open infrastructure, open access. More than a decade later, there is not a single example of a study documented with complete transparency– instead, we have prioritized archiving experimental results or analysis code, thereby skirting the fundamental issues. Some argue the problem is lackadaisical adoption of OS. We argue the problem runs deeper: we are dealing with a broken metonymy (a literary trope whereby a part represents a whole) where the tools built to address insufficient transparency are conflated with actually addressing insufficient transparency. Those are not the same thing. For example, simply having and knowing how to use tools needed to build a house does not mean one knows how to build a house. We need to understand what the final structure must look like and why, as well as have a plan for how to build it and distribute the labor. We introduce the Heliocentric Model as the framework needed to understand what OS must look like to support process-wide transparency. We argue that tools like open data and open infrastructures should not be promoted separately, but must instead be reconceptualized as mutually dependent and compulsory components of scientific documentation, intended to effectively document researchers’ decisions, actions, & interpretations. In other words, Helio reconceptualizes science as a human process embedded in human cognition, and for human use.

Short abstract:

The exploration of futures as ‘not-yet’ relations beyond plausibility radically challenges the current anticipatory knowledge production. Considering two NEST case studies, we will analyze the not-yet potentials of both the epistemic subject and the sociotechnical meanings involved in Open Science.

Long abstract:

Nowadays approaches to future studies through anticipatory heuristics mostly employ the concept of plausibility. While the pursuit of reasonability beyond narrow probabilities is liberatory enough to be transformative (Urueña, 2019), plausible futures show up as not being open enough towards a truly disruptive Open Science: they do not only promote openness as the ultimate goal, but rather also a closure that fits within a certain plausible framework. In order to increase openness, this contribution starts with a sharp distinction between plausible relations and not-yet relations (Poli, 2017): while plausibility demands a closure of implausible possible trends in order to make an effective anticipation within certain circumstances, not-yet-established relations involve open-ended connections and correlations ─whether these are (im)plausible, (im)probable or (im)possible─. Our main thesis is that the exploration of these types of relations radically challenges our current knowledge production and aims to expand our concept of openness in science, technology and innovation.

After a top-down development of this theoretical framework, we offer a bottom-up discussion through an exploration of two different ongoing NEST case studies: 1) an anticipatory governance experiment in nanomedicine, where it will be discussed how not-yet relations might co-produce sociotechnical knowledge and co-constitute epistemic subjects (Barrenechea & Ibarra, 2020); and 2) a hermeneutical analysis of future ‘love technologies’, which shows how common visions are still incapable of exhaustively representing the present; and asks for not-yet meanings (Grunwald, 2020). These cases highlight the need to open up uncertainty and challenge plausible/implausible futures.

Short abstract:

Outer Space is at the heart of a particularly productive tension since it is so inherently “open” to access, but the required technology to actively pursue its exploration and utilization is prohibitively inaccessible. This paper examines these challenges through the framing of Open Engineering.

Long abstract:

Paradigms such as Open Science, Open Access, Open Innovation and Open Source, have permeated from the information technology fields to the frontiers of scientific and technological development. Combining these networked, distributed systems of scientific and technological production with principles of responsible research and innovation (RRI) – a critical gap has emerged in understanding the processes and management structures of new project and mission development.

Open Engineering is emerging as a new framework to understand and support the co-production of new knowledge in high-tech domains, acknowledging the wider range of contributing stakeholders and critically engaging with key technical, ethical and political challenges. Following this framework, this paper examines a series of ongoing anticipatory experiments, contextualizing engineering processes and management with different dimensions of societal systems:

1) Technological Paradigm: A speculative design for a new space station in geostationary orbit – Gateway Earth - as a way to contextualize the transition of open engineering processes and challenge the traditional military-industrial complex.

2) Legal Framework: A curated engagement with pivotal Outer Space Treaty in contrast to alternative, performative and embodied legal frameworks, challenging the inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders in (post-)colonial extractivist practices.

3) Socio-political Context: The emergence of social imaginaries around trans-planetary ecologies and their problematic, contradictory and transformative promises in contrast with the impact of space and satellite technology on daily life on Earth.

4) Cultural Visioning: Using collaborative practices to establish fictions and narratives challenging current mindset and cultural conditioning vis-à-vis utopian and dystopian future(s), spanning collective and individual practices.

Short abstract:

The normative ambition and scope for opening up the dynamics of science and innovation are uncertain and less evident in Open Science narratives than in previous ones (e.g., RRI). The paper advocates for a more explicit and radical notion of "openness" concerning science, technology, and innovation.

Long abstract:

Initiatives and discussions surrounding responsible research and innovation are increasingly integral to EU research and development (R&D) policies. For example, the Responsible Research and Innovation principle (RRI) was a cornerstone in the European Commission's Framework Program "Horizon 2020". This principle, particularly in its more radical interpretations, construed responsibility primarily in political terms. Promoting more responsible research and innovation under the rubric of RRI implied fostering governance dynamics aligned with society's diverse expectations, values, and interests. Responsibility, in essence, was framed as the conscientious stewardship of the futures being shaped by science and technology in the present.

However, RRI and similar normative frameworks have encountered significant constraints that have led to their instrumentalization or limitation of disruptive or transformative potential, often in favor of predetermined socio-economic preferences. Moreover, the influence of RRI within R&D policies is diminishing, being supplanted by alternative initiatives and normative frameworks. Despite calls to maintain RRI as a central tenet, the European Commission's science policy is moving towards the era of Open Science.

But what is the normative significance of this new principle of Open Science? This paper aims to shed light on the disruptive potential of transformative Open Science policies and practices. It argues that the normative ambition and scope for opening up the dynamics of science and innovation are uncertain and less evident in Open Science narratives than in previous ones. Against this background, the paper advocates for a more explicit and radical notion of "openness" in relation to science, technology, and innovation dynamics.