Open Science and Feminist Ethics: Promises and Challenges of Open Access

Abstract

Open science advocates argue that making data sets, studies, methodologies, and other aspects of research free from publication fees and available to scholars will increase collaborations, access, and dissemination of knowledge. In this article, I argue that open access policies and practices raise both feminist and ethical issues. I reflect on the five themes of feminist ethics identified 20 years ago by a task force of the Society for the Psychology of Women. I update the themes with recent scholarship of feminist philosophers and ethicists, and I use the themes to raise questions about the promises and challenges of open access. Throughout, I offer suggestions for all who seek to make knowledge of human psychology more complete and more accessible to more people. I conclude by offering recommendations informed by feminist ethics to those building the policies and practices of open access.

Open science and epistemic pluralism: A tale of many perils and some opportunities

“…Rewarding open science practices is a sensible stance to enhance rigor for some quantitative organizational research, but it poses challenges for other types of research. Others argued that core open science tenets might be unethical (Brabeck, 2021), especially when doing research with vulnerable and minoritized people (e.g., women victim of abuse, undocumented immigrants) and might discourage altogether other types of research. Action research and ethnographies might disappear as they completely reject the idea of testing hypotheses and the presence of a bias-free, independent researcher, which are requirements of many open science practices.…”

“…In this commentary, we develop a slightly different argument: the open science movement, as a direct offspring of (post)positivist research paradigms 1 , has the potential to stifle epistemological and scientific pluralism and reproduce historical scientific hierarchies it purports to redress. In doing so, we distinguish between the spirit of open science (i.e., promoting participation, transparency, and access to science) and its implementations (e.g., OSF badges, TOP guidelines, and multi-laboratory research, but also sexist attacks on social media and podcasts by other scholars in the field [e.g., the Twitter pile-on in November 2021 regarding Roxanne Felig and her coauthors' paper], and a general disregard of feminist epistemologies; Brabeck, 2021). In the first part of this commentary, we focus on open science's ideals and examine a few unstated assumptions, advancing a set of equally valid assumptions based on constructionist thought, and then we discuss how unchecked implementations of open science practices can marginalize scholars that do not subscribe to its epistemic premises.…”

Fostering openness in open science: An ethical discussion of risks and benefits

“…In this context, the movement of Open Science is getting popularity and overwhelming response as it addresses the complexities of research and provides a model for data validation and reanalysis, as well as for making scientific knowledge and discoveries more accessible (Mohamed et al, 2020). In addition, the Open Science models will provide opportunities for the democratization of the science knowledge and enhance their visibility and accessibility to institutions with meager resources (Holbrook, 2019;Brabeck, 2021).…”

Identifying Gaps and Building Bridges Between Feminist Psychology and Open Science

“…The third and fourth articles pose epistemological questions regarding the nature of open science and its (in)compatibility with qualitative (Bennett, 2021) and ethical (Brabeck, 2021) scholarship. In Bennett's article, the author specifically focuses on feminist, qualitative research, including artistic and voicebased methodologies such as photovoice and poetry, and considers how the principles of open science would operate outside of a positivist epistemological framework.…”