This article presents an overview of characteristics of Citizen Social Science (CSS) in Germany. CSS is defined as scientific research in the humanities and social sciences, carried out in cooperation between professional and non-professional researchers. The study draws on an online survey and semi-structured interviews with project coordinators and co-researchers. It finds that participatory research activities in the humanities and social sciences are very diverse in their disciplinary traditions and organisational settings. Key features of CSS activities initiated inside as well as outside academic institutions are analysed to understand patterns of participation and cooperation. The results show that CSS activities are frequently realised in heterogeneous consortia of academic and non-academic partners. These consortia influence interactions between professional and non-professional researchers. To investigate these observations further, the article extends the analytical gaze from participation of individual volunteers to various forms of cooperation in consortia. This shift in attention brings to sight additional actors and activities that are usually not, or only marginally, considered in discussions about C(S)S. Staff of civil society organisations, municipalities, schools or cross-sectoral initiatives as well as university students are involved in making CSS work. In addition to research tasks, CSS rests on science communication, project management and intermediation activities. This extended perspective captures more diverse constellations of knowledge production in participatory research in the social sciences and humanities than the common focus on participation. In this way, the article aims to lay the groundwork for understanding the functioning of CSS beyond aspects described by the concept of invited and uninvited participation. It shows that CSS activities are not limited to capacitating lay people for participation in science. A more adequate description is that such projects are concerned with facilitating cooperation with co-researchers and other partners in consortia inside and outside of academia. On this basis, the article introduces the notion of cooperation capacity as a heuristic device to propose new prompts for research on CSS as well as for supporting CSS practice.

With the rise of the Third Mission of universities, the role of science management, which itself has been growing steadily over the years, is gaining relevance for organizational success. Science managers possess exclusive knowledge of organizational processes and keep their own external networks; neither scientists nor university management can give up on successfully carrying out Third Mission activities, such as lifelong learning or student exchange programs. This study takes up the question of whether this exclusive knowledge of science managers fosters their institutional establishment as influential—and therefore, professional—actors. This leads to the research question: Which power resources are available and used by science managers in the relationships with scientists and university management? The theoretical approach builds upon power resources and micro-politics as the core explaining variables for influencing others. In this pursuit, case studies of four German universities with altogether 27 qualitative interviews were conducted with science managers, university management and scientists. The results show that science managers only partially experiment with tactics that entail more risk, such as barter trade or dominance and the most common strategy in relation to others is moderation by idealization or objectivity. In contrast to expectations, they hereby lean more often on internal than on external networks as power resources. In general, two patterns emerge from the analysis: One group of science managers that act managerial and wishes for more room for individual maneuver, and a second group that sees itself as a service provider with little self-interest and wishes for more rules to strengthen their position towards scientists.

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The growing popularity of preprint servers, notably during the Covid-19 pandemic, prompts a reevaluation of their role in science communication. This study delves into discussions and commentators on preprint servers, applying systems theory and boundary objects to scholarly and science communication. The approach is to analyze a sample of COVID-19-related pre-prints of bioRxiv and medRxiv and examine their comments and associated Twitter posts. Using mostly quantitative methods, the data was split in two groups: comments by biomedical peers and non-peers inside and outside academia. The results show that almost half of the comments can be attributed to peers, who also discussed different topics than the rest of the sample. On Twitter, the proportion of comments from peers was significantly lower, and the social network of academic and non-academic communities is intertwined. In summary, pre-prints can be seen as boundary objects that stabilize rather than blur the distinction between science and non-science. In this way, they promote the dissemination of knowledge and inter-disciplinary discourse. However, communication between scientists and the public remains ambivalent due to high barriers to entry. Challenges remain for integrating discussions into the peer review process without diluting standards and encouraging engagement from experts and laypersons.