Sabina Leonelli (2023), Cambridge University Press, Elements in the Philosophy of Science — DOI-10.1017/9781009416368
Key takeaways
- Treating openness as the sharing of research objects (data, models, papers) can shrink epistemic diversity and deepen epistemic injustice; openness should instead be understood as building judicious connections among diverse systems of practice, on a process-oriented view of research.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-098. What follows is what the work says about itself.
The Open Science movement seeks wide dissemination, scrutiny and reuse of research components for the benefit of science and society. Leonelli examines what OS principles and practices do in contemporary research and how they bear on the epistemology of science. After reviewing the worries that drove calls for openness, she argues that the common reading of openness as resource-sharing can constrain epistemic diversity and worsen epistemic injustice, producing unreliable and unethical knowledge. She proposes instead that openness means establishing judicious connections among systems of practice. This rests on a process-oriented view of research as a tool for effective and responsible agency.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 30 seconds of active reading over 1 session. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-098 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as a clear, openly normative philosophical reframing of Open Science by someone who took part in the policy process, and as a compact bridge between social epistemology (epistemic injustice, pluralism) and data practice. Its evidence is four illustrative cases and the author’s own qualitative research, not systematic data, and “judicious” remains a demand for deliberation rather than a criterion.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-098, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: medium — 30 s dwell and a load-bearing, open-access short book. The skim captures the thesis, but the case studies carry the argument.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-098 is that reading):
- Bears on ML’s own openness debates (open weights, open data, benchmark sharing): it argues that releasing artefacts is not in itself openness and can entrench the advantages of already dominant groups.
- Check §3.4 on reproducibility against Feest (LIT-161), who also downplays direct replication.
- Check whether the process-oriented view yields concrete criteria for “judicious” connections or remains a reorientation.
Access when seeded: The Cambridge Core landing page returned a notice (“Temporary Disruption”), but the open-access PDF (CC BY-NC 4.0, 88 pp) downloaded from Cambridge Core via curl. The PDF says “First published online: July 2023”, and Crossref gives online 2023-07-31. Read the abstract, keywords, contents, the openings of §§1–5, the §3 case-study heads, and §6.