Over the last decade the science system has been going through some fundamental changes and even something of a structural reformation. Spearheaded primarily by groups of biomedical scientists, psychologists and economists, a reform movement pushing for more openness and verifiability in science has been underway: the Open Science Movement. This movement first started to gain momentum when claims about a credibility crisis were made. Failures of large-scale replication attempts, seeking to test key studies in some (sub-)disciplines, worsened initial fears and were quickly treated as proof that fundamental problems did in fact exist and a crisis was indeed unfolding. As a result, the narrative of a broken science or science in crisis was quickly adopted and promoted across the boundaries of these disciplines. Trans-disciplinary communities began to form, pushing for systematic interventions to improve the science system overall and to remedy perceived issues of wide-spread irreproducibility as well as a general opacity in science. 

While Open Science reforms have garnered quite a bit of positive attention from researchers, the media, funders, and policymakers alike, they have also received some fundamental criticism over the years. Critics have, for instance, pointed to a rather narrow understanding of what constitutes ‘good’ science and how this produces new mechanisms of exclusion rather than inclusion. Similarly, critics have questioned if the implementations of Open Science measures have in fact benefitted all stakeholders of the global science system as promised. In addition to issues with the assumed universal virtue of Open Science, critical voices have pointed towards an often abrasive discourse culture associated with the Open Science movement (see “brOpen Science” and “the tone debate”). Hence, Open Science principles, their implementations, and those communities promoting them, have themselves become the objects of critical scientific inquiry in recent years.

To explore these critical debates around Open Science and science reform, we are bringing together leading scholars who contributed to these debates as part of a one-day in-person workshop in Berlin. Each of our invited speakers will briefly present their own research on the varying aspects of the Open Science reform movement and elaborate on how they theoretically and/or methodologically address the issues they sought to investigate.

To start off the workshop, Sheena F. Bartscherer will present her ongoing investigations into the value systems and narratives underlying the Open Science movement. In her talk, she will explore the self-perception and public communication of reformers’ activism, highlighting international replication initiatives and their surrounding community.

Sven Ulpts will proceed with a talk on agreements and discrepancies between researchers’ perspectives and the ideals promoted by Open Science reformers on issues like the practice and role of preregistration, replication as well as reproducibility. Hence, in his talk he will explore how current notions of Open Science reform relate to the actual realities and aims of researchers, who are supposed to live by the standards proposed or even demanded by reformers.

This will be followed by Fernanda Beigel who will highlight the social and technical conditions underlying the advancements, controversies and resistances to Open Science reform in the social sciences and humanities. In particular, she will compare the ideals of Openness as propagated by current reform movements with implemented forms of Openness in Latin America and the historical conditions as well as developments that such local (indigenous) forms of Openness are contingent on. 

Stefanie Haustein will explore the publishing side of Open Science in her talk, discussing her research on the financial dimensions underlying the actual implementation of Open Science. In particular, she will speak on open access models and how large academic publishers are able to make an even larger profit with new formats such as APCs.

Afterwards, Bart Penders will talk about how current science reform relates to the War on Science. Based on theories of politics of quantification, he will explore how the Open Science reform movement elevates specific epistemologies to be the guiding principle for all of science and how the roles of statistics, fraud, reliability and retractions are used and sometimes even weaponized. 

Lastly, David Peterson will conclude the round of talks by presenting his work on theoretically approaching Metascience as a social movement, reflecting on how this conceptualization of the Metascience community behind the Open Science reform has been taken up by other researchers  since, to characterize and investigate Open Science reform.  

We will wrap up the workshop with an open panel discussion involving all six speakers, encouraging the audience to participate in a communal discussion and reflection of the day’s proceedings. We intend to find topics as well as perspectives that we – as researchers interested in researching science reform – still need to address.

The aim of this event is to provide a forum for the critical reflection of theoretical and methodological approaches to investigate modern science reform and Open Science more specifically. We invite scholars interested in the social and epistemic dimensions of Open Science as well as those curious about studying science reform more broadly, to attend this workshop. Everyone, whether critical or enthusiastic about Open Science, is invited and welcome to join!

Contact & Registration

For registration please send an email directly to Sven Ulpts via: su@ps.au.dk

Deadline for registrations is Sunday, April 20th 2025.