10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17561
application/pdf
2038-3460
17561
1
en
Manuela Perrotta
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Doing STS in Times of Crises
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
13
Editorial
2022-07-07
2023-06-30
2022-07-07
2023-10-26
5-8
TS
Manuela Perrotta
2022/07/07
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17561
5
2038-3460
1
en
8
Doing STS in Times of Crises
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17561/16412
13
                                                          Editors’ Note
     !


     Doing STS in Times of Crises



    This issue marks the beginning of Tecnoscienza’s fifth three-year cycle
and, on the basis of the journal’s alternation policy, inaugurates a new
Coordination Board. We would like to thank the two previous members
of the Coordination Board, Attila Bruni and Paolo Magaudda, for their
invaluable contribution to the journal since its conception.
    When the journal was first published, twelve years ago, it represented
an example of alternative and independent scientific publishing practices,
in a context where open access practices were in their early days. With
the support of STS Italia and the volunteer work of a group of Italian
scholars, Tecnoscienza introduced a radical platinum/diamond Open Ac-
cess (OA) model, in which neither authors nor readers were required to
pay any fees, to make scientific work freely available under the Creative
Commons license. Against the odds and in a landscape where several STS
open access journals have emerged, this joint effort and hard work has
been rewarded by a growing readership and, more recently, international
indexing. In addition to our previous acknowledgment as “Classe A” (top
journals for the Italian research evaluation body ANVUR) in Sociology of
cultural and communicative processes and in the WOS Emerging Sources
database, since 2021 Tecnoscienza is also indexed in Scopus.
    Nowadays, with the pressure of initiatives like Plan S – forcing re-
search funded by public grants to be published in compliance with OA
principles without paying direct fees – the OA landscape has changed
significantly, with most of the leading commercial publishers introducing
OA routes in their subscription journals. In this regard, it is widely rec-
ognised that OA policies, jointly with digital repositories and knowledge
bases, may play a pivotal role in disseminating knowledge for free to all
potentially-interested researchers and concerned groups of stakeholders.
In its putative figuration OA is indeed expected to make scholarly
knowledge a sharable resource, that is a knowledge commons. The main-
stream narrative on the public governance of knowledge-making practices

!
TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
13 (1) pp. 5-8 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                              2022
6                                                           Tecnoscienza – 13 (1)


(e.g., EU’s open science policy) seems to consider OA a context-free ar-
rangement, able intrinsically to promote intellectual exchange among re-
searchers and societal actors, thus increasing the visibility and impacts of
science. Alas, despite this narrative’s depiction as an intriguing and desir-
able politics of knowledge, it conceals a highly-questionable soft deter-
minism. In fact, it neglects to consider how OA framework, in its chains
of translation from putative figurations up to specific editorial policy
practices, displays some degree of ambivalence and pitfalls, being sub-
sumed strongly within the current academic economisation. This is a cru-
cial point to be considered by those, such as like Tecnoscienza, currently
endorsing OA policies, so as to reflect under which conditions such poli-
cies may effectively democratise the access to knowledge.
     In this regard, at least for the last three decades, the economisation of
scientific knowledge has configured the domain of academic publishing,
in which OA in embedded, as a highly asymmetric and, to a certain ex-
tent, exploitative market. It is well known that scholars, acting as referees
and journal editors, provide intensive free work to commercial publishing
companies. At the same time, public academic institutions and research
organisations are mobilising a growing amount of financial resources for
paying Article Processing Charges (APCs) to the publisher for releasing
research outputs in OA.
     Hence, OA is reflecting the power asymmetries between universities
and private publishers operating in a concentrated market that ensures
large profit margins for a small group of publishers. It is not by chance
that both European and US-based universities cancelled some of their
journals’ subscriptions. However, it is important to point out that the
most interesting and, maybe, sharp challenge to the dominant business
model of academic publishers is related to some out-of-law innovation
(e.g., Libgen and Sci-Hub), that are putting in the foreground the need to
define public policies for coping with the regime of knowledge commodi-
fication operated by the major for-profit publishers.
     So, OA – far from being an inherently liberating tool – strongly ask to
reconsider carefully issues related to the public value of science and scien-
tific knowledge, as well as the kind of assemblage public academic institu-
tions are drawing with academic publishers, where OA is enabling the
dissemination of research for free for its readers, but authors (and their
institutions) are in charge of paying for expensive APCs for OA publish-
ing.
     Against this backdrop, and echoing Donna Haraway, endorsing a
free-of-charge OA implies “staying with the trouble”, thus enhancing
connectedness, unusual and unexpected collaborations for re-imaging the
Coletta, Crabu and Perrotta                                              7

future politics of knowledge outside the current regime of academic
commodification.
    To stay true to our platinum/diamond OA model and strengthen
Tecnoscienza’s position in the STS landscape in times of crisis, we needed
to find allies to maintain our self-supported publishing practices. We are
happy to announce that, from our next issue, Tecnoscienza will have an
academic publisher: AlmaDL Journals. This is an OA e-publishing service
of the University of Bologna supporting scientific, peer reviewed journals.
The partnership between journal founder STS Italia and AlmaDL will al-
low us to continue with our platinum/diamond OA model and to main-
tain intellectual and editorial independence, while receiving support for
publishing practices.
    In the next three years, we plan to consolidate our position as an in-
ternational platform that offers a space for novel intellectual inter and
cross-disciplinary thinking. In addition to being a venue for publishing
original research in the forms of essays, we continue to promote the de-
bate on emerging topics in contemporary STS thorough the publication
of special issues or thematic sections, along with our “Scenarios” and
“Crossing Boundaries”. Our effort will be especially directed to make
Tecnoscienza’s sections a space for contributions by plural forms of en-
gagement with diverse social worlds.
    As part of the STS community, we have rarely witnessed such a mas-
sive deployment of STS at work as in current times. The more climate,
health, social and political crises are connected, the more STS themselves
seem fully entangled with them and the boundaries between engagement
and commitment, knowledge and practice are increasingly blurred within
our field. At the same time, the whole theoretical and methodological
repertoire of the last decades erupted worldwide, making visible at once
and to all the technoscientific controversies, lay and expert knowledge,
the laboratories and their actor-networks, the epistemic cultures and
communities, the categorical work and socio-material practices, and all
the components that feature the field. Walking through the perfect storm
for STS in the years to come requires the utmost responsibility and
thoughtfulness. Rephrasing Lucy Suchman, this involves to put to the test
how our scientific community is ordered, to proclaim the fragility and
openness of its existence, and to explore alternatives.
    Our journal will continue to promote what we consider good scientific
work without taking for granted the publics and the communities that we
are addressing. With the transition to the new publisher in the next issue,
further ways of engagement with our readership will be introduced. We
will keep supporting the voices of early-stage and independent research-
8                                                         Tecnoscienza – 13 (1)


ers, extending the invitation to practitioners, journalists, and non-
academics around the planet. That gives us the opportunity to thank once
more the guest editors, external anonymous reviewers and all the authors
whose voluntary contributions have made Tecnoscienza’s journey possible
and supported its resilience and maturation, despite the challenging
times. Just like STS, Tecnoscienza is a collective and distributed endeav-
our.
    Trevor Pinch (1952-2021) has been a brilliant example of how STS
could mingle and engage with art, science, technology, everyday life, and
make the difference in the academic/scientific as well as personal spheres.
In remembering Trevor and the huge contribution he made to the field,
we are going to follow his path for doing STS in times of crises. Would
you like to join the walk? There will be fun.

    Claudio Coletta, Stefano Crabu, and Manuela Perrotta
!
