Ni! I thought I had shared it here at the time, but just realized I did not. Better late than never, so below are the comments I sent as feedback to Unesco, in case it can be interesting or useful to anybody, even if only as food for thought.
On 13 Sep 2024, Ale wrote:
Earlier this week I have learned, with great interest, about the POSM document: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/call-inputs-global-consultation-draft-principles-open-science-monitoring
[…snip me introducing myself and my work where I mention assessment of OSH as an OS monitoring activity…]
Paying respect to the work done so far on the document and to the people involved, and with great appreciation for you taking inputs, I would like to share some comments on it.
C1: The introduction in POSM talks about monitoring, while the tripartite text essentially discusses indicators. In my understanding, reducing monitoring to indicators would go against the stated goals, and against the possibility of striking a balance between the “comparable” and “inclusive” principles. STI studies have, for a long time, included more holistic approaches such as network-based cartographies and other mixed-methods/quali-quanti ways to monitor socio-technical systems. That they are absent from the POSM risks favoring the exclusion of such approaches also from official monitoring initiatives.
C2: It is well established that indicators produce mechanisms for rich-get-richer and lock-in dynamics, and OS indicators aren’t an exception. With OA we’ve seen commercial editors play that song, alongside the chant of mandates, to the tune of abusive APCs. The document adresses these phenomena only partially, and the items that do – “Inclusive” and “Avoid rankings” – are among the least developed. Beyond those items, section “Self-assessment and responsible use” could welcome principles inspired from decolonial and STI studies, such as empowerment and reflexivity, that would account for the performativity of definitions and indicators, and for the politics, political economy, and privileges they embody.
C3: In the context of the two previous comments, the inherent tension between comparability and inclusiveness could be explicitly stated in the document. Also, and in correspondence, the mutualistic complementarity between indicators and other kinds of monitoring could be discussed.
C4: Open infrastructures are cited in a footnote and in the bibliography, but not acknowledged in the text. Indicators and other forms of monitoring that rely on proprietary infrastructures, even with “Explicit data provenance”, have their adherence to every principle distorted by matters of access, trust and relationships with those infrastructures, whose private interests are in many ways at odds with scholarly interests, public interests, and with the equal treatment of communities, nationalities, and cultures. Thus, adopting and contributing to such open scholarly infrastructures could be stated as a principle, while deploying and maintaining them as a collective goal.
I’d like to add that I admit to knowing very little of the context of this ongoing work and that my comments are perhaps not written with the deserved discretion. I apologize if they seem misplaced. And again, thank you for the opportunity to comment on this draft and for your attention,
Ale
My territorial axis is between South America, where I’m a member of Brazil’s