Amelia Acker: Platform Power and Data Integration Services in Scientific Infrastructure
This talk examines how commercial cloud services and data integration platforms are shaping scientific knowledge infrastructure and institutional approaches to digital preservation and archival access. Drawing on findings from two collaborative research projects—a decadal analysis of data management plans from NSF funded scientists and the Palantir Files, a public interest archive documenting the firm's data integration services—I explore how platforms are transforming traditional roles of information institutions in providing access to data. The presentation investigates three key developments: the increasing adoption of commercial cloud services (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) for storage in scientific data management, the rise of data integration platforms in research environments (GitHub and Figshare), and the implications for institutional autonomy in providing access to archives and publicly funded science. By examining the adoption of platform services in research data management and digital preservation, this work identifies key tensions between open access and commercial platform control. The conclusion will explore counter-archiving projects and institutional strategies that challenge platform dominance while reimagining archival access in a time of networked science.
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39:53
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39:53
Martin Reinhart & Felicitas Hesselmann: From scandal to reform: approaches to research integrity at a turning point
This talk explores the historical evolution of scandals related to academic integrity and their implications for the relationship between science and politics. We argue that there are three distinctive waves of scandalization since the postwar era: The first wave, starting in the 1970s, led to governance measures addressing public trust issues in science funding. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a second wave centered on research misconduct, prompting the establishment of boundary organizations such as the Office of Research Integrity. Since the 2010s, the third wave shifted focus to concerns such as Open Science and reproducibility, giving rise to a mainly intra-scientific moral entrepreneurship that unfolds not along one-time scandals anymore, but as part of a continuous crisis discourse. This current wave of reform movements is met with considerably less intra-scientific resistance than its predecessors and hence may inadvertently achieve regulatory goals surpassing previous political intentions.
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1:01:59
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1:01:59
Björn Hammarfelt & Gustaf Nelhans: Styles of valuation: Disciplinary differences in assessing research
Academic disciplines have distinctive ways of valuing research. These differences exist not only across fields but also between collegial and organisational evaluations. This presentation draws on recent empirical studies of assessment processes in Swedish academia. By analysing guidelines and peer review reports across four domains: humanities, social sciences, medicine, and natural sciences, we identify five key dimensions of publication assessment: (1) Work attribution, (2) Content quality, (3) Publication channel, (4) Impact, and (5) Volume. Our findings reveal contrasting evaluation styles at different organisational levels, which we call ‘disharmonic styles of valuation.’ Rather than focusing on the origins of these quality standards, we emphasise how they interact and coexist within academic assessments.
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37:27
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37:27
Catalina Quiroz-Niño, Ana María Villafuerte & Margaret Meredith: Hermeneutical Justice in International Projects
International research collaborations can base their research focus, questions and interpretations of the issue on Western assumptions of knowledge. This can delegitimise the potential contributions of some project partners, such as those located in the global South, and silence their interpretations of the issue. International projects can therefore be spaces of what Fricker calls "hermeneutical injustice". This presentation is based on Quijano´s work on Coloniality to identify enduring patterns of power that inform and shape frames of reference, culture and knowledge production in the colonised regions of the world. The presenters argue that research collaborations should be based upon the recognition, understanding, and exchange of knowledges and interpretations of concepts and realities in multiple directions and dimensions. In this presentation we will describe and explain the approaches we adopted in a collaborative Erasmus project in our aim to promote hermeneutical justice and to recognise all participants in their capacities as knowers and knowledge creators.
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32:15
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32:15
Justo Serrano Zamora: Liberal Epistemologies, Participatory Initiatives, and the Current Existential Crisis of Democracy
In my talk, I explore two main responses to democracy’s current existential crisis and their mutual relation. On the one hand, many argue that we should address the phenomenon of post-truth and its negative effects on democratic politics by cultivating citizens’ capacity to build their own, autonomous, judgements. On the other hand, many defend the need of participatory initiatives as a way of bringing citizens to identify with their political institutions. I argue that participatory initiatives are often jeopardized by the epistemological assumptions that draw from the current liberal struggle against post-truth. Instead of promoting liberal epistemological orientations among citizens, we need to draw on socialist or cooperative epistemologies, which make sure that citizens cultivate the necessary (social) conditions to sustain and expand projects of political participation.
Ireland