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Short abstract:

This contribution focuses on the role of petitions in the social movements of scientists questioning transformations in scholarly publishing. Drawing on the analysis of two petitions launched by chemists, it examines controversies around OA from the perspective of the sociology of social movements

Long abstract:

In chemistry, injunctions to open up publication (or perceived as such) have met with "resistance" for decades, and chemists have often mobilized to denounce this move towards openness in their discipline. The proposed communication focuses on disciplinary communities that may have appeared conservative in their choices for (or against) open science, and looks back at two key moments in the controversies around Open Access policies: firstly, in 2010, when the first OA mandates were adopted in Europe (with an “anti-OA” petition signed by 80 chemists addressed to the Swedish national funding agency, relatively confined to Sweden) and in 2018 with the announcement of Plan S, when collectives of scientists mobilized following the framing by a COAlition S (a group of European funders) of a 10-principle plan imposing, from 2020, OA on articles resulting from research funded by these stakeholders. Initiated by a chemist at Uppsala University, the 2018 mobilization took the form of a petition that spread internationally and gathered over 1,700 signatories in 50 countries. More than a mobilization of keyboards (Badouard), the petition is seen here as a relevant analyzer of complex dynamics, reflecting a social game but also a place of affirmation. It questions what it means to be "for" or "against" OA, and the scope of OA policies in "intermediate" countries where OA infrastructures and performance-based allocation systems have existed for years, and conceived as a programmatic framework for imagining and mobilizing support for change towards new practices rather than for describing and explaining existing ones.