Nostra res agitur: open science as a social question
The openness of science – in its debate, data and papers – was not born from some kind of administrative imposition: it was born as a social norm, shared by informal knowledge communities.
The open access movement, however, has been involved early in administrations, which, while yielding some advantages, entails a danger both philosophical and political. In research systems more and more bureaucratized and conditioned by oligopolies, openness might be enforced and perceived just as an administrative burden among others: hence, we might more easily forget that openness is crucial for the public use of reason that allows everyone of us – as scholars and as human beings – to be more than a gear of a machine, by enabling us to call into question the meaning of our actions. Or else, more pessimistically, the open science ideal might never be attained, because of the pressure exerted by standards and parameters of evaluation agendas that, by now, are rarely written by researchers.
The conference goal is to foster a peer conversation among scholars regarding the meaning of their work and a sharing of experiences and tools overcoming disciplinary boundaries and national borders.
We are well aware that those who have something to say on our topic are many more than the invited speakers of our first conference in Pisa. We do hope, however, to be able to give the floor to other AISA members and speakers as well as to build or rebuild a more comprehensive and fruitful dialogue among people and with institutions in our future meetings already set.
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