Open Science Conversations Collective Reflections

In response to our community’s interest in deepening the discussions started in the Study Group meetings on the contents of NASA TOPS Open Science 101, in March 2024, we prepared a series of conversations to reflect on various topics related to Open Science. The aim was to collectively understand how we learn, apply, and what implications Open Science has for our region. Additionally, we aimed to recognize those dimensions of Open Science that might be challenging from a Latin American perspective and reflect on them. In short, we sought to acknowledge its advantages and potential by debating its scope and possibilities.

Open Science in Latin America and Challenges

In Latin America, about two-thirds of scientific production is funded by public funds, as a result, in several countries like Argentina, Mexico, and Peru, scientific results are made openly accessible in response to regulations or open access guidelines for publications and data, aiming to ensure access to scientific knowledge considered a public good. However, this does not mean that Open Science in the region is deployed in a strategic manner that allows us to consider it in the context of a world that organizes scientific development unevenly depending on the region where it is generated.

On the contrary, in Latin America, openness is often guided by communities, driven by the needs of the teams, propelled by key individuals who support Open Science, or seen as an inevitable process due to funder requirements. This is why Open Science practices (such as openly publishing various results or creating collaborative communities for knowledge building) usually appear in a fragmented manner or outside a collective strategy.

During the conversation, we had the opportunity to collectively reflect on what the “ethos” of Open Science envisioned from Latin America suggests. The following emerged as identity characteristics:

• A sense of community,
• The mandate to involve society in the processes,
• The pursuit of horizontal connections through networked work, and
• A non-commercial perspective.

This perspective also occurs within the framework of the excellent training of those conducting research in Latin America, who contribute to various scientific fields.

These same definitions led us to identify a series of challenges arising from the application of Open Science principles in Latin America, among which we highlight the issue of article processing charges (APC) for open access publication in the most renowned journals, and the scientific data extractivism executed by power centers, which have greater capacity to process and, therefore, interpret the data according to their own conceptual frameworks of meaning.

Regarding the first challenge, it is important to remember that Latin America is a pioneer in creating communities, regulatory frameworks, and non-profit open access experiences for scientific production. The movement has been consolidating since the 1980s, supported by the regional body of journals in Spanish and Portuguese, with the aim of improving access and visibility of regional scientific production through a dissemination strategy that bypassed paywalls for researchers or their institutions.

Unlike the traditional pay-to-read system, open access can occur through different routes, each impacting in distinct ways:

• The green route, which involves making digital files (including preprints) available through an institutional repository, for example.
• The gold route, where publishers make the final versions available in open access journals, with charges for the author or their institutions (APC).
• The hybrid route, where articles are published openly with APC in journals that also manage the traditional system (a clear example of business model adaptation).
• The diamond route, promoted in Latin America, which follows an academic, non-profit publishing model (charging neither authors nor readers).
• The black route, accessed through non-commercial platforms that operate outside legal frameworks, such as the well-known Sci-Hub, which researchers from all regions (rich and poor) often perceive as a morally acceptable option.

As we discussed during the meetings, the commodification of editorial models towards paid open access (the golden road with APCs, which can reach up to 5000 US dollars in some cases) particularly impacts the global south, further widening the gap in the distribution of recognition and knowledge in global science. In response to this scenario, there are reactions from research consortia seeking to avoid publication in these journals and instead promote those through other avenues (diamond) even if they are not the most prestigious in the field.

On this issue, during the conversation, we asked ourselves: How much can Latin American research teams afford to pay for APCs without compromising the resources of their own research? And also, how much can people conducting research in the region join this boycott, when publishing in lesser-known journals could negatively impact our careers due to the evaluation methods in place for promotion? The dilemma of incentives and evaluation then arises and in many cases is sustained by the confusion between the prestige and quality of scientific journals.

On the other hand, the challenge of opening research data from Latin America brought back the idea of extractivism as a serious problem. In this sense, during the conversation, the production and reuse of data were identified as a process that is not only part of research dynamics but also of public policies on science and technology. This led us to reflect on the role of Latin America in the global division of scientific labor that reproduces colonialist practices whereby data is collected from the global south, but its value is captured in a central north with more funding and resources for its processing and interpretation.

Similarly, issues such as reviewing the practices of data management planning by researchers, or disciplinary differences impacting the type of data and the different demands for its treatment due to its heterogeneity, emerged in the community debate. This highlights the data curation process as essential and almost always costly. We also discussed the potential value of data in terms of its incorporation into the productive or commercial world, as one of the considerations when deciding on openness and its limits.

Additionally, the complexity and time required for cultural change in research communities to incorporate Open Science practices emerged as a topic. For better reception, the proposal must be supported by incentives that drive the choice for openness, as it often requires more time, effort, and specific resources.

In the meeting dedicated to the topic, questions arose such as: Who ultimately captures the value of data that was so costly collected, organized, and curated by a Latin American research team? And also, what data to share and under what conditions? It is worth considering virtuous mechanisms of openness that promote regional development and propose to narrow existing gaps, opening more advantageous conditions for Latin American research.

A strategy of rational openness

The last meeting of the series was dedicated to discussing Open Science as a field of dispute for epistemic justice, a term coined by Miranda Fricker, an English philosopher, in her book “Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing” (2007), translated into Spanish in 2017.

In simplified terms, this concept invites us to think about the recognition of others regarding the knowledge we have and the ability to “speak” (testimonial epistemic justice), and about the fair distribution of knowledge, the ability to be a subject of knowledge (hermeneutical epistemic justice).

The absence of testimonial epistemic justice can occur due to the overvaluation of the words of those who are more powerful, or due to the deficit in the value of the words – and listening – of more vulnerable or stigmatized groups. Whether due to excess or deficit, testimonial epistemic injustice always contributes to inequality.

On the other hand, hermeneutical epistemic injustice can be even more harmful than the former because it implies a structural dimension whereby there is a difficulty or lack in understanding one’s own experience and, consequently, the experienced injustice is unrecognized.

How can we use Open Science to open up in a strategic way so that epistemic justice is possible, without losing sight of the Latin American identity and, at the same time, the power of global Open Science? How can we position ourselves regionally without becoming isolated? Can we, through Open Science practices, promote epistemic justice?

Thinking of strategies that allow us to value our voice (and obtain recognition for our experiences and knowledge), and avoiding reproducing gaps by forming shared frameworks of meaning for our own practices, can be ways to build a Latin American Open Science that defends its “discursive authority” and proposes its “capacity as a subject of knowledge”, from Latin America, for the world, about the world, and in favor of Latin America.

If you are interested in the topic and want to learn more, we suggest these links:

• Zotero Open Science Community Library.
• Frederickx, I. 2018. Open Access: Tearing down the paywall is hard work. (Translated by Katrien Bollen and Shana Michiels, cartoons by Joris Snaet). UK Leuven. https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2018/open-access-tearing-down-the-paywall-is-hard-work
• Monti, C. and Unzurrunzaga, C. (2020) Access to scientific literature from Sci-Hub: Analysis and reflection of downloads in Argentina. Hipertextos Journal, 8 (14), pp. 111-136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24215/23143924e022
• https://opensciencestudies.eu/

Acknowledgments

This publication was made possible thanks to a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7386372) NASA grants 80NSSC23K0854 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8215455), 80NSSC23K0857 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8250978), and 80NSSC23K0861 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8212072), and grant DAF2021-239366 and grant DOI https://doi.org/10.37921/522107izqogv from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, a fund advised by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (Funder DOI 10.13039/100014989).

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Here is the citation we recommend using to reference it: Xhardez, V., Ación, L., Míguez, M. P., & Ascenzi, L. (2024). Open Science Conversations Collective Reflections. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11582471