Paper short abstract:

Understand the influence of socio-institutional issues in adoption of Open Science for sustainable development in Ubatuba/Brazil. Existing institutional logics is limited; innovative institutionalities are required to improve co-production among academia, affected communities and social groups.

Paper long abstract:

This is part of a research project aiming to understand to what extent socio-institutional issues affect the adoption of Open Science (OS) values and practices as potential tools for sustainable and participatory development strategies.

The project adopts both action-research and territorial approaches. It is focused on Ubatuba, a coastal municipality of São Paulo State, southeast Brazil, an area of rich and endangered sociobiodiversity, attracting scientific research and congregating rich ecosystems of local knowledge. The project develops practical experiments as prototypes for possible uses of OS in local development, by partnering up with key stakeholders, and analyzing these dynamics considering the different perspectives and interests involved.

Participatory public management mechanisms have contributed to social influence and access to strategic knowledge. Nevertheless, their transformative potential is limited: their roles are circumscribed from the beginning, and the scope of local decision-making is narrow when confronted with macro-political forces.

OS may improve forms of co-production of knowledge among academia, affected communities and other social groups -- all of them epistemic communities --, widening the conditions for vulnerable actors to influence and appropriate themselves of knowledge relevant to social and environmental demands. New spaces, objectives and methodologies for knowledge production are conditions for alternative development. Access to information combined with alternative dynamics of knowledge production might contribute to and are reinforced by the emergence of innovative institutional arrangements that interrogates the managerial logic.

The study brings relevant inputs to STS literature, converging local and empirical research and theoretical reflection.