Innovating Science: Open Access and the Situated Field of Physics

In the recent academic debate about Internet-related technologies, in particular web-based ones, these technologies have been conceptualised as a means to democratise innovation, or foster a new and innovative form of organization. In the face of this hype on the transformational role of the Internet and the Web, a suitable dose of academic scepticism requires an empirical discussion on whether it is appropriate to consider the Web and the Internet as able to bring about such radical innovation in organizations. Other IS scholars pointed out that, in the social debate about technologies, we can find the presence of computopian and computropian views, the former giving technology a full positive role, the latter one rejecting it in favour of a negative perspective. Unlike these exaggerated standpoints, an argument that considers Web technologies as a phenomenon, as suggested by Ciborra, can lead to a deeper and more balanced insight into the relationship between the Web and innovation processes. In our study, we try to understand the situated practices that lead scientists to endorse the Open Access way of publication, going back to the origin of the web with High Energy Physicists, trying to demonstrate that in this field it is not possible to reduce everything to universalistic claims.

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