Public participation and the co-production of open scientific knowledge: What is at stake?

Abstract

Open access is vindicated across diverse areas of scholarly practice, where it is often expected to overcome the material and symbolic barriers that stand in the way of knowledge circulation. However, whether openness is ultimately a good thing or not also seems to depend on which kind of knowledge is being opened and for whom. In this paper I draw on different areas of science, technology and society studies (STS) to suggest that the mainstream views on open access validate practices that may also constrain the possibilities of addressing social needs via scientific knowledge. Building on the case of open access for drug development initiatives in the field of neglected tropical diseases, I elaborate on the different forms of engagement and exclusions that persist in spite of supporting open access to the research data. Two ideas derived from STS are central to this critique: cognitive exploitation (processes through which third-parties turn non for-profit knowledge outputs into profits) and the relations between central actors and peripheries of scientific production. My claim is that the lack of capacities and the interposition of international, biologically-centered research agendas-not access restrictions per se-can hinder the utilization of locally applicable knowledge, deterring public participation in disadvantaged contexts.

Open Access in Theory and Practice

“…In the context of OA these theories typically present structured analyses the existing scholarly communications system, or new approaches to scholarly publishing and dissemination that represent radical changes to the status quo. These include new business models for journal publishers Gumieiro & De Souza Costa, 2010), conceptualisations of public participation in science (Ferpozzi, 2017), and technical solutions to publisher disintermediation (Barbera & Di Donato, 2006).…”

Embedding co-production and addressing uncertainty in watershed modeling decision-support tools: Successes and challenges

“…In light of these findings, numerous publications have aggregated case studies from the literature and have provided best-practice recommendations regarding the use of coproductive techniques to develop models and modeling support tools. Various terminology has been used to characterize these approaches, including co-production (Ferpozzi, 2017), collaborative and participatory modeling (Basco-Carrera et al, 2017b;Gray et al, 2018;Halbe et al, 2017;Voinov and Gaddis, 2008), translational ecology (Jackson et al 2017), structured decision making (Failing et al, 2013;Gregory et al, 2012), and generally stakeholder participation (Loucks, 1992;Loucks et al, 2005;Scholten et al, 2001;Voinov and Bousquet, 2010;Voinov et al, 2016). For example, Voinov (2016) and Voinov and Bousquet (2010) demonstrate the importance and demand for stakeholder participation in resource and environmental modeling, extracting information from over 200 papers published in Environmental Modeling and Software (from 2010 to 2016) that referenced stakeholder involvement.…”