Accelerating Social Science Knowledge Production with the Coordinated Open-Source Model

Abstract

With the growing complexity of knowledge production, social science must accelerate and open up to maintain explanatory power and responsiveness. This requires redesigning the front-end of research to build an open and expandable knowledge infrastructure that stimulates broad collaborations, enables breaking down inertia and path dependencies of conventional approaches, and boosts discovery and innovation. This article discusses the coordinated open-source model as a promising organisational scheme that can supplement conventional research infrastructure in certain areas. The model offers flexibility, decentralization, and community-based development and aligns with open science ideas, such as reproducibility and transparency. Similar solutions have been successfully applied in natural science, but social science lags behind. I present the model's design, and consider its potential and limitations (e.g., regarding development, sustainability and coordination). I also discuss applications of the coordinated open-source model in various areas, including the first open-source survey harmonization project in social science.

Comparative Panel File: Manual for CPF v.1.5

“…CPF originated as an attempt to move the data harmonisation process to open science and crowdsource cooperation and provide novel functionalities (Turek 2023). We recognised that the conventional, institutionalized approach to harmonisation can be limited in some aspects, and the open-source model can supplement it in certain areas.…”

“…Instead of harmonising only these variables, we decided to extend the approach pioneered by CNEF to a larger set of key variables of social science research and make the result available to the broader scientific community. Specifically, the novelty of CPF is the open-source model of harmonization that allows to makes several important steps forward (Turek 2023). First and foremost, CPF has a broad focus, including information about education, family and marital relationship, labour market status, subjective wellbeing and work satisfaction, social origin, and socio-economic status, in addition to the classic economic variables also present in CNEF.…”