The new administration in the US is attacking science. Accepted grants and publications are forced to be retracted or altered if they contain forbidden words. Funding and peer review processes for biomedical research are grinding to a halt, and (open) governmental data are being taken down to reflect the views of the current political administration. Many of the ongoing initiatives seem to target diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and climate science specifically and reflect the views of the current political administration.

Such developments are harmful to science and will have negative repercussions on the global scientific enterprise.

We know that science depends on social and political forces – and as such is shaped by governmental strategies. Funding streams and scientific budgets vary according to who is in power. Science infrastructures and policies, such as openness of data or research, reflect the positions and values of particular administrations. We see this not just in the US, but also in the Netherlands and Europe more broadly.

The recent actions of the US government go beyond such influences – both in their severity and scope – and interfere directly with core principles of modern science. The post-second World War science system was built on the premise of science being accountable for public science funding. In this system, peer review demonstrated to the public that scientists hold each other accountable to the high standards of science. In return, science retains freedom to decide collectively what to research and how to research it. This principle is now being grossly violated by the recent developments in the US.

In the face of this political interference in science, we see various forms of resistance within academia, from rescuing data to organising open letters and protests. Our mission at CWTS, and of our focal areas jointly, is to improve how science is practiced, governed, and serves society. As we continue to work to understand and intervene into what we see as serious threats to the scientific system, we see diversity as a great asset, rather than something to oppose. Below, we outline our commitment and describe how our work within each focal area relates to these developments.

Information & Openness

A key aim in the Information & Openness focal area is to advocate for the use of open research information and systems, as set forth in the Barcelona Declaration. This involves making metadata and other documentation openly available, as well as supporting the use of open infrastructures and data sources. A key factor in ensuring the sustainability of open infrastructures is having a diversity of such open sources, which are interoperable and which implement forms of community governance. As pointed out in recent blogposts and articles, even when vanguard open databases, such as PubMed, are under threat from shifts in government policy, other open infrastructures can provide alternatives. However, there is still much to be done to improve open metadata and to work toward sustaining open infrastructures. We need to balance a diversity of open sources while working to avoid a cluttered landscape and to balance the interoperability of such sources (which often relies on global standards) with local, diverse community needs. We will continue to work actively to address these issues.

Engagement & Inclusion 

Broader participation and public engagement with science is at the core of the Engagement & Inclusion focal area. One important initiative revolves around the idea of a “multiversatory”, showcasing a diversity of epistemic perspectives, languages, disciplines and geographies, instead of limiting to the traditional English-based, Western literature indexed in traditional bibliometric databases. In addition, the multiversatory should render broader relations with society visible, not limited to processes internal to science, such as citation or co-authorship. This initiative is in close alignment with initiatives in the Information & Openness focal area.

Another development in our focal area revolves around science in societal contention, focussing on how science is being used in public debates (e.g. COVID-19 lockdowns, climate change), and how science is affected and changing in contentious settings (e.g. researchers avoiding public and social media in certain contentious topics). The recent developments in the US raise many questions that are put centre-stage in this initiative, including questions around the use of science in policy, the role of industry (e.g. big tech) in science, the relationship between science and misinformation and science activism.

Evaluation & Culture

In the Evaluation & Culture focal area we are concerned with problematic effects of dominant notions of ‘excellence’ in research and policy making. Typically equated with high-impact publications, prestigious grants, and affiliations with highly ranked universities, ’excellence’ promotes a narrow understanding of what is considered valuable academic work. This can render invisible important functions of research and higher education, such as contributing to democratic resilience or tackling societal challenges. Narrow notions of ’excellence’ can moreover contribute to artificial path-dependencies in scientific career structures that threaten diversity in the composition of the scientific work force. High levels of competition for prestigious publishing space in turn can lead to marginalization of unorthodox research.

Aside from doing research around these challenges, we develop and participate in interventions geared to tackle them in practical terms. This includes promoting reform in research evaluation, shaping science policy debates, as well as designing novel formats of scholarly publishing built around values of openness and accessibility.

Moving ahead: monitoring science at risk

The commitments described above connect to our existing projects and aims within the focal areas at CWTS. As we build on them, we aim to undertake a more detailed and systematic monitoring and understanding of how the developments in the United States are putting science at risk. More generally, there is a need to monitor and understand how science throughout the world is impacted by threats such as authoritarian governments, ongoing wars, embargoes and bans. We hope our ongoing efforts will contribute to this.