PsyArXiv Preprints | Is Open Science Neoliberal?

Abstract:  The scientific reform movement, which is frequently referred to as open science, has the potential to substantially reshape how science is done, and for this reason, its socio-political antecedents and consequences deserve serious scholarly attention. In a recently formed literature that professes to meet this need, it has been widely argued that the movement is neoliberal. However, for two reasons it is hard to justify this wide-scale attribution: 1) the critics mistakenly attribute the movement a monolithic structure, and 2) the critics' arguments associating the movement with neoliberalism are highly questionable. In particular, critics too hastily associate the movement’s preferential focus on methodological issues and its underlying philosophy of science with neoliberalism, and their allegations regarding the pro-market proclivities of the reform movement do not hold under closer scrutiny. What is needed are more nuanced accounts of the socio-political underpinnings of scientific reform that show more respect to the complexity of the subject matter. To address this need, we propose a meta-model for the analysis of reform proposals, which represents methodology, axiology, science policy, and ideology as interconnected but relatively distinct domains, and allows for recognizing the divergent tendencies in the movement.