Messing with Merton: The intersection between open science practices and Mertonian values

ABSTRACT

Although adherence to Mertonian values of science (i.e., communism, universalism, organized skepticism, disinterestedness) is desired and promoted in academia, such adherence can cause friction with the normative structures and practices of Open Science. Mertonian values and Open Science practices aim to improve the conduct and communication of research and are promoted by institutional actors. However, Mertonian values remain mostly idealistic and contextualized in local and disciplinary cultures and Open Science practices rely heavily on third-party resources and technology that are not equally accessible to all parties. Furthermore, although still popular, Mertonian values were developed in a different institutional and political context. In this article, we argue that new normative structures for science need to look beyond nostalgia and consider aspirations and outcomes of Open Science practices. To contribute to such a vision, we explore the intersection of several Open Science practices with Mertonian values to flesh out challenges involved in upholding these values. We demonstrate that this intersection becomes complicated when the interests of numerous groups collide and contrast. Acknowledging and exploring such tensions informs our understanding of researchers’ behavior and supports efforts that seek to improve researchers’ interactions with other normative structures such as research ethics and integrity frameworks.

KEYWORDS:

• Merton
• Open Science
• research integrity
• communism
• Universalism
• disinterestedness
• organized skepticism

Acknowledgments

This work was originally initiated by Jonathan (Jon) P. Tennant in 2020. We thank Hans Radder, Iratxe Puebla and Sven Ulpts for their useful suggestions that improved this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Other characterizations of the term use a broader framing, which includes code or other object types as part of what should be shared. For instance, the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science states that: “Open scientific knowledge refers to open access to scientific publications, research data, metadata, open educational resources, software, and source code and hardware that are available in the public domain [that is] provided to all actors immediately or as quickly as possible” (UNESCO 2021, 9).

2. Other important trends that may affect how Mertonian values are understood and realized may include the transformation of scientific practice into a large-scale international enterprise with unique ethical challenges (Hosseini et al. 2022) characterized by e.g., extensive private and national funding of institutions (Stack 2021, 3), the evolving role of universities from an education establishment to one that helps “faculty to form start-up companies” (Resnik 2007, 12), the advent of Web-based technologies (Chesbrough 2015) and digital infrastructure such as persistent identifiers (Cousijn, Hendricks, and Meadows 2021).

3. Although many have argued that such metrics are inherently harmful for evaluating science (Brembs 2018; Brembs, Button, and Munafò 2013), more fundamentally, the journal article or “paper” (for which metrics are used) are not representative of the scholarly process. This is because such formalized methods of communication typically neglect the diverse processes, decisions, and social realities of scientific research, and act to deceive readers by misrepresenting this reality (Bourdieu 1988).

4. See also the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, which states that Open Science entails that “Software code, description of tools, samples of equipment and equipment itself may be freely circulated and adapted” (UNESCO, 2021, 10). Once we consider such a broader sense of sharing several practical issues start to emerge, such as questions of infrastructure and funding that need to be in place to enable sharing of such diverse resources. Limitations in the means for sharing can also affect the motivation to share as they increase the time and energy that individual researchers need to invest in the process.

5. The “when” and “where” of sharing are often intimately connected. Researchers might choose outlets for publication that allow them to publish faster (for instance because of personal connections with the editor) or choose more obscure outlets to publish controversial findings, thereby managing the rate at which their results find broader uptake (Hosseini and Gordijn 2020).

6. A focus on changing the incentive structures in science is also central to discussions about fraud and poor replicability of findings in the experimental sciences. See, e.g., (Munafo et al., 2017; Heesen, 2018; Bright 2021).

7. It could be argued here that even if scientists are not credit-seekers by nature, the system in place forces them to act like one. Without publications, there simply is no career. This view assumes that everyone who is in academia strives for a career in academic research and therefore has to submit to the publish-or-perish culture. But this is not the case. For instance, some studies indicate that whilst 80% of PhD students in science and engineering express a preference for an academic career at the beginning of their PhD, only 55% remain interested in an academic career once they are several years into their PhD (2017). This, the authors argue, is not due to lowered expectations of future job availability but more to changing preferences for the kind of work they want to do. Similarly, not everyone pursuing a postdoctoral fellowships aims to obtain an academic career, with careers in industry or government clear alternatives.

8. Note that this section focuses on peer review of journal articles. We are aware that in trying to uphold norms of open science, researchers share other scholarly outputs including data, code, protocols, pre-registrations, and preprints, and provide opportunities to interact with and review them. Many of the discussions brought forward in this section therefore apply equally well to those scholarly outputs. For brevity’s sake, we will nevertheless mainly focus on peer review from a journal perspective here. This decision is informed by journal peer reviews’ long history and abundance of explorations and evidence about their status and effectiveness (Horbach and Halffman 2018).

9. Nosek, for instance, primed by examples, wonders about the frequency of “inquiries related to mergers and acquisitions of your [non-profit] organization.” Source: https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/1572616426481123335; accessed 21 September 2022. See also: Mirowski, P. (2011). Science-mart. Harvard University Press.

Additional information

Funding

At the time of submission, Mohammad Hosseini received funding from The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant Number UL1TR001422.The funders have not played a role in the design, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.