Call for papers: “The Politics of Open Science” (9-10 May 2016, Graz)

Deadline January 29th, 2016

Conference site: https://conference.aau.at/event/46/page/7

Abstracts can be submitted here.

The notion of Open Science is enjoying great popularity at the moment, some even go so far to call it “the better science”. In general, Open Science demands the highest possible transparency, accountability, and shareability in knowledge production, as well as the participation of (all) relevant stakeholders in the scientific process. Realms of Open Science practices include Open Access, Open Research Data, Open Methods, Open Education, Open Evaluation, and Citizen Science.

The European Union has recently adopted the term Open Science in its research framework programme linking it strongly to Open Innovation – modes of opening industrial design, production and paths to and from markets – and the vision of science enabling jobs and growth in general. However negotiations about benefits and challenges of Open Science take place in many different arenas. We are witnessing big differences in the appropriation of Open Science practices and policies across epistemic cultures and geographic regions. The uptake of Open Science varies widely: from voicing concerns about knowledge capitalism by young academics or grassroots organizations, to senior scholars and science administrator uniting publicly in the Open Access negotiations with commercial publishing houses, to top­down policy decisions against scholarly skepticism, last but not least to the DIY movements, such as biohacking.

In this session we would like to discuss not only the existing political tensions in Open Science cultures, such as sharing versus privatization of knowledge. We are inviting practitioners of Open Science, scholars conducting case studies on Open Science, or policy makers as well as science administrators to reflexively address a wide scope of issues in opening scientific knowledge production and engagements with science and
society.

Central questions of this session include, but are not limited to:

  • Socio­political dimensions of openness in science and research: negotiations, participation, actors, arenas, values (ethics, impact, legal issues,…), ideologies, hegemonies (gender, geopolitics, …)  in historical and contemporary discourses revolving around Open Science
  • Socio­technical dimensions of open science politics: infrastructures, institutions, norms, standards, materials, exploitations, of Open Science practices
  • Epistemological politics in Open Science movements: clashes of thought collectives, changes in knowledge production and dissemination, effects of Open science in education and training, and for evaluation

It is intended to organize the session as Open Space format: with short lightning talks, moderated discussions and break out spaces (depending on the number of participants), collaborative online tools and more. One further objective is to document the event for public access online.

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