Paper short abstract:

Transparency requires documenting entire scientific processes, including diverse human labor from science experts & amateurs. Our Helio Model argues that different aspects of scientific processes require different media to effectively document researchers’ decisions, actions, & interpretations.

Paper long abstract:

As the primary source of scientific information, the journal paper is faced with a crisis of purpose. Ostensibly, it should increase scientific knowledge by transparently documenting the research process. In practice, traditional papers are incomplete records –they do not acknowledge diverse human labor nor can they accommodate different information types involved in science. Our ‘Helio Model’ of scientific documentation improves transparency and reproducibility by acknowledging varied labor and outputs in science, and by advocating for the most appropriate media to transparently document researchers’ decisions, actions, and interpretations.

While developments in information technology and the open source movement have reduced barriers to producing, editing, and distributing different media types, this shift alone is insufficient to effectively communicate scientific processes. Researchers of all types must first recognize that they are doing much more than a paper describes: ‘showing is better than telling’ is particularly true for science, but the plots and figures common in articles are not sufficient to capture the richness and variety of scientific processes. For example, experimental procedures difficult to describe verbally could be clarified with video demonstrations. By highlighting more diverse human labor–not just research outputs but who contributes to knowledge building–the Helio model facilitates documentation and acknowledgement of all contributions, including from amateur and citizen scientists. Using Helio, researchers of all kinds can learn to recognize the full range of their work and to consider what media is best suited to communicating the different aspects of the scientific process optimally, ideally from the very beginning.

Paper short abstract:

Living Labs engage diverse actors in collaborative problem-solving. This fosters peculiar epistemic processes, largely unexplored in research. Integrating Social Epistemology, I investigate how LL formats influence knowledge transfer. Findings reveal a range of innovative formats for novel insights

Paper long abstract:

Living Labs have been implemented as new format for knowledge transfer and a collaborative way of knowledge production by scientists and several actors from different social spheres. In Living Labs several actors with diverse backgrounds and epistemic practices, work together to find solutions for a spectrum of sustainability problems.

This contribution addresses the question whether other formats of knowledge production and transfer relate to the quality of this knowledge. Statements about the epistemic benefit of specific methods or formats in LLs besides success factors (Bergmann, Schäpke et al. 2021) have not been in the focus of research by now, my aim is here to connect these questions with central tenets from Social Epistemology. Epistemically, Living Labs are hard to describe, as diverse knowledge types and practices are apparent. Living Labs can contribute to the social and political dimension of science if the formats of knowledge co-production, co-evaluation or transfer align with the goals and topics which occur in the individual living lab.

Based on 30 qualitative interviews and ethnographical data, e.g. participant observation from open (presentations, citizen conferences) and closed formats (meetings, workshops), efforts in varying formats for uni- and bidirectional knowledge transfer can be seen. Here various new formats exist, ranging from self-experiments, focus groups to dance performances. The new and unique knowledge they produce, should be moved into the focus of (Social) Epistemology.

Paper short abstract:

Geological insights promise innovative solutions to many contemporary ecological problems. Yet, it is unclear if these insights can be fully captured/conveyed in established knowledge forms. I argue an inherently unwritable epistemic form exists here, that must be experienced in an embodied fashion.

Paper long abstract:

Geology, a relatively young science, has a wealth of insights; particularly for conceptions of time, and how these are scientifically approached.

The focus is not just comprehending the precise extent of world history, but also the value of time – a (human) sense of temporal values. If Earth is slightly older than humanity, our actions appear more significant than us being just a radar-blip. Frodeman’s 1995 'Geological Reasoning' discusses the discovery of ‘Deep Time’ influencing our normative response to temporal matters; Time has relative value, affected by the extent of world history itself.

I use this discussion to argue that established formats limit scientific communication as these do not fully capture such geological knowledge, in which something is often lost or incomplete when not experienced first-hand. Further, here lies discrimination against local knowledge, with bias against ‘unscientific’ conduct such as employing imagination; Keith Basso’s 1996 'Wisdom Sits in Places' accounts for (overlooked) indigenous views on the matter.

Much geological knowledge is based on imagination – the field is a space of interpretation. Fieldwork is dynamic, concerning uncontrollable phenomena that are nonsensical when not understood in the full context. In this epistemic situation it as rational to feel that one’s hand traverses millions of years of rock layers, as to accept a peer-reviewed study that challenges our instincts. Whilst text transmits technic and theory, acceptance of temporal reality requires an embodied experiencing that I shall argue is a viable alternate knowledge form free of the material trends of contemporary print culture.

Paper short abstract:

Disseminating environmental scientific knowledge requires innovative approaches to boost public interest. This research draws upon two campaigns employing Minecraft to introduce a multi-dimensional analytical model to examine the socio-technical assemblage of such communicative instances.

Paper long abstract:

The dissemination of scientific knowledge in the environmental domain needs innovative approaches to enhance public interest and consensus concerning sustainability agendas. In particular, environmental engineering knowledge is among the most challenging fields to communicate effectively. In this regard, simulation has long been recognized as a suitable strategy to address this difficulty and recently scholars have started to investigate how online 3D environments may serve as a prominent platform for articulating communicative instances directed towards specific targets.

This study investigates two top-down campaigns employing the open-world video game Minecraft to recreate tridimensional physical ecological environments as a means of mediating environmental knowledge. The first is a 2021 institutional campaign in Venice, Italy, where developers built an interactive map of the Venetian lagoon to promote sustainable development through a series of green practices. The second case is a 2020 corporate campaign that engages elementary school students in constructing a local power plant in Minecraft to simulate water usage and conceptualize an environmentally sustainable city.

The research, grounded in semi-structured interviews with campaign and software developers (n=6), introduces a multidimensional analytical model that explores how knowledge emerges and takes shape from the intersections among ecological issues, the network of actors and stakeholders involved in communication, and the video game ecosystem (which includes the video game assets and affordances as well as the articulation of its community). The analysis exposes trade-offs in disseminating environmental knowledge through the video game ecosystem and elucidates the chain of interdependencies forming the socio-technical assemblage sustaining such communicative instances.

Paper short abstract:

This spoken word intervention uses poetry and academic writing (my own and quotations) to reflect on translation, embodied knowledge, epistemic shifts, speechlessness, and institutional structures. It will be done mostly in German and translated into English in real time with the help of software.

Paper long abstract:

Imagine a text in progress that plays with the circularity of discourse production. A text running like closing credits of a movie, suggesting linearity yet shifting slightly with each iteration. A text including words by Sara Ahmed, Ilse Aichinger, René Magritte, and myself, spoken by myself, transcribed and translated into English by software. A reflectionprovocationinvocation about confined spaces of possibility, speech, trust, pressure. Imagine your head shaking with laughter and despair at the resilience of institutional structures. Imagine taking a breath, pausing, and asking a question.

[…] Wie oft muss sich Geschichte noch wiederholen, damit sie sich nicht mehr wiederholt? Wie oft muss sie noch ihre Form verändern oder eine andere Gestalt annehmen, damit sie eine neue Realität einlösen kann – damit eine neue Realität sie ablösen kann?

Wo passiert diese Verschiebung, und wann und wie wird sie realisiert?

Und was passiert, wenn wir nicht verschoben, sondern verrückt sagen? Oder von Kipppunkten sprechen? Gestauchtes P, um kurz innezuhalten, in dem Wissen, dass das Überschreiten bevorstand. Alle Brenngläser haben längst zu klaffenden Rissen im trockenen Erdboden und wild aus ihnen züngelnden Feuern geführt. Ständiges Zischen, dichter Rauch. Welche Fassade soll also noch gewahrt, welche Spiegelscherbe poliert, welche Struktur mit aller Macht aufrechterhalten werden? […]

Paper short abstract:

This workshop aims to discuss the display of scientific publishing formats on research network websites. As a necessary tool for self-representation in the sense of science communication, these websites tell a story about what is understood to be a scholarly publishing format at a given time.

Paper long abstract:

Taking up one of the panel's questions about how formats other than the book or the journal article can play a role in the production of knowledge, I propose a workshop that aims to explore which rather non-scientific formats are increasingly understood as scientific resp. how they are transformed into scientific formats. We want to answer these questions by looking at the logic of organization and sorting of the formats found, as well as their specific form. The workshop is based on the assumption that, in addition to the book and the journal article, numerous popular formats have migrated into the scholarly publication system, but that in the process they are changing their form - becoming kind of scholarly. These formats may represent a new category in the scholarly publishing system that appears to be a hybrid of scholarly communication and science communication. Therefore, this perspective will also touch on the second question of the workshop: how formats that are not generally considered as means of scholarly knowledge expression can be imagined as such. To introduce the workshop, I will give a brief overview of the existing research on this topic before we delve into our examples by surfing the web and the web archive.