Is Open Science Neoliberal?

The scientific-reform movement, frequently referred to as open science, has the potential to substantially reshape the nature of the scientific activity. For this reason, its sociopolitical antecedents and consequences deserve serious scholarly attention. In a recently formed literature that professes to meet this need, it has been widely argued that the movement is neoliberal. However, for two reasons it is hard to justify this widescale attribution: First, the critics mistakenly represent the movement as a monolithic structure, and second, the critics' arguments associating the movement with neoliberalism because of the movement's (a) preferential focus on methodological issues, (b) underlying philosophy of science, and (c) allegedly promarket ideological proclivities reflected in the methodology and science-policy proposals do not hold under closer scrutiny. These shortcomings show a lack of sufficient engagement with the reform literature. What is needed is more nuanced accounts of the sociopolitical underpinnings of scientific reform. To address this need, we propose a model for the analysis of reform proposals, which represents scientific methodology, axiology, science policy, and ideology as interconnected but relatively distinct domains, and thus allows for recognizing the divergent tendencies in the movement and the uniqueness of particular proposals.

A social-psychological examination of academic precarity as an organizational practice and subjective experience

Research and teaching conditions have, particularly for those who are junior or from disadvantaged backgrounds, deteriorated considerably over the years in the higher education sector. Unequal opportunities in access and advancement in careers have led to increasing levels of precarity in the higher education sector. Although the concept of precarity has been grasped in many other disciplines, the social-psychological understanding of this concept remains unexplored. In this paper, we aim to develop a social-psychological understanding of precarity to examine how identity dynamics and intergroup relations, as well as associated organizational controls, reinforce inequality regimes and power structures that create precarious conditions in academia. In doing so, we use social identity theory and system justification theory under an inequality regime framework. We argue that even though change towards equality and equity in academia should be possible, it is difficult to achieve this because of entrenched identity interests by power holders and the perceived legitimacy of the existing system. Therefore, academic precarity should be recognized both as a subjective experience and as an organizational practice to make inequalities more visible and decrease the perceptions of legitimacy-and to eventually achieve a fundamental positive transformation in academia.

Towards a social psychology of precarity

This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how 'precarity' is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, 'the precarious'.

“Unavailable, insecure, and very poorly paid”: Global difficulties and inequalities in conducting social psychological research

This paper offers an exploration of research production in social psychology as a global endeavor from the point of view of Anglophone social psychologists (N = 232) across 64 countries. We examine social psychologists’ beliefs regarding the difficulties in conducting research in social psychology and the inequalities that they report between the Global North, South and East Europe, and the Global South. Across all regions, we found pervasive critical awareness of obstacles to conducting research – including underinvestment in the field, precarious and counter-productive labor conditions, and excessive and biased disciplinary standards. However, we also found that colleagues outside the Global North reported quantitatively and qualitatively larger obstacles to research. These included well-known historically-rooted inequalities but also contemporary systemic procedural and distributive injustices in material, human, and social-political capital. Non-Northern colleagues in particular critically reflected on how these inequalities and injustices are amplified by Northern hegemonies in social, institutional, disciplinary, economic, and political systems. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for social psychologists, social psychology as a discipline, and its situation within broader hierarchical systems and their intersectionalities.

Material and epistemic precarity: It's time to talk about labour exploitation in mental health research

The conditions under which people labour in mental health research affect how and what knowledge is produced - and who benefits or doesn't from involvement in health research systems. There has been, however, little sustained investigation of the uneven modalities of labour exploitation across what are increasingly financialised systems of mental health research. This theoretical paper advances conceptual and empirical investigations of labour in health research - outlining how material precarity and epistemic precarity often go hand in hand, and largely drawing on examples from the UK. The intertwining of labour relations and epistemic cultures can be understood by bringing together insights from two bodies of knowledge not commonly in contact with one another - survivor/service user research and critical research on universities and academic labour. The article addresses how mental health research makes significant use of the labour of (i) contract researchers (many of whom work on precarious and exploitative contracts); (ii) lay contributors (through 'patient and public involvement'); and (iii) research participants (where the conditions underpinning participation in various kinds of research increasingly blur the distinction between volunteering, and 'gig' work). Labour relations affect, and are affected by, efforts to change epistemic cultures and reduce epistemic inequalities, and epistemic and material precarity make efforts to improve research culture much more difficult. Those experiencing both material and epistemic precarity in health research systems need to be at the heart of efforts to combat both.