Gatekeeping should be conserved in the open science era

authored by: Hugh Desmond
Abstract: The elimination of gatekeepers for scientific publication has been represented as a means to promote the core moral values of open science, including democratic decision-making and inclusiveness. I argue that this framing ignores the reality that gatekeeping is a way of structuring prestige hierarchies, and that without gatekeeping, some other structuring would be needed: the flattening of prestige hierarchies is not possible given scientists’ need to navigate information overload. I consider two potential restructurings of prestige hierarchies, one based on citation count and the other on search algorithm rank. These are shown to simply reintroduce status biases and hierarchies in ways that either do not further the open science ideals of democracy and inclusiveness, or else involve some de facto gatekeeping. Gatekeeper elimination should not be thought of as an intrinsic part of the open science movement. In fact, insofar as gatekeeping is guided by professional ideals of impartiality and diligence, it can be thought of as an ally of open science values.
Organisation(s): Institute of Philosophy
External Organisation(s): University of Antwerp (UAntwerpen)
Type: Article
Journal: SYNTHESE
Volume: 203
No. of pages: 26
ISSN: 0039-7857
Publication date: 06.05.2024
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Philosophy, General Social Sciences
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04559-2 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{47211b7501a94afb93a35e4740602372,
title = "Gatekeeping should be conserved in the open science era",
abstract = "The elimination of gatekeepers for scientific publication has been represented as a means to promote the core moral values of open science, including democratic decision-making and inclusiveness. I argue that this framing ignores the reality that gatekeeping is a way of structuring prestige hierarchies, and that without gatekeeping, some other structuring would be needed: the flattening of prestige hierarchies is not possible given scientists{\textquoteright} need to navigate information overload. I consider two potential restructurings of prestige hierarchies, one based on citation count and the other on search algorithm rank. These are shown to simply reintroduce status biases and hierarchies in ways that either do not further the open science ideals of democracy and inclusiveness, or else involve some de facto gatekeeping. Gatekeeper elimination should not be thought of as an intrinsic part of the open science movement. In fact, insofar as gatekeeping is guided by professional ideals of impartiality and diligence, it can be thought of as an ally of open science values.",
keywords = "Bibliometrics, Human nature, Open science, Peer review, Search algorithms, Social status, Transparency",
author = "Hugh Desmond",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2024.",
year = "2024",
month = may,
day = "6",
doi = "10.1007/s11229-024-04559-2",
language = "English",
volume = "203",
journal = "SYNTHESE",
issn = "0039-7857",
publisher = "Springer Netherlands",
number = "5",
}