Rethinking Open Science: The Role of Communication

The first version of this text was presented in the “Philosophy of Communication” section at the ECREA’s 5th European Communication Conference, “Communication for Empowerment,” in Lisbon in November 2014. I would like to thank the audience for the lively post-presentation discussion.

The aim of this study is to present discourses on Open Science. My reconstruction emphasizes the role of communication in science. I use two models of communication for the analysis: the transmission model and the constitutive model. By reconstructing the main method of defining Open Science, I demonstrate that the role of communication in science has been reduced to the dissemination of the knowledge produced. Such theorizing is typical of the transmission model and ignores the stage of the social construction of knowledge. However, it is possible to consider this stage when the constitutive model of communication is used. My findings show that the constitutive understanding of communication is more useful in analyzing the Open Science phenomenon if we focus on the communicative dimension of scientific practices.

This article was written as part of the project titled “A Contemporary Polish Humanities in the Face of the Challenges of Scientometrics,” which was financed by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities in Poland (decision number 0057/NPHR3/H11/82/2014).