Universal Open Science policies risk alienating researchers | Impact of Social Sciences

Grand challenges, such as inequality and climate change, and sudden global challenges, such as COVID-19, require mission-based and solution-centered approaches that are not only interdisciplinary, but also break from traditional ways of doing research. Through the free exchange of research ideas, results and data, Open Science promises to be a solution. However, in implementing Open Science what is not always clear as Mirowski puts it is, “what sort of thing [it is] that Open Science proposes to fix about older science”. This critical reading sees Open Science as being allied to the ethos of ‘radically collaborative science’ and to the emergent structures of ‘platform capitalism’, rather than to an actual structural break in the nature and practice of modern science. As such, even though the League of European Research Universities might confidently state “Open Science will be part of the ‘new normal’”, Open Science cannot yet be understood as an epochal break tangible at the micro level of research practices.