area, CWTS Engagement & Inclusion focal; de Bordes, Carole; Costas, Rodrigo; Holtrop, Tjitske; Traag, Vincent
This document outlines the strategic plan for the Engagement & Inclusion focal area at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University for the period 2026–2028, presenting the focal area’s vision, long-term strategic impacts, and operational objectives developed through collaborative discussions among members and coordinators.
Rafols, Ismael; Costas, Rodrigo; Bezuidenhout, Louise; Brasil, André
For science and technology to contribute to social justice, scientometrics analyses need to be able to produce descriptions that are appropriate to specific contexts and values. Given that the participation of stakeholders in the analyses is crucial for these perspectives to be realized, this requires research information analyses that are “open”. In this paper, we propose that this “openness” in research information concerns several dimensions. In the first place, research information should be open in the sense of being transparent and accessible. Second, research information should be open in the sense of being inclusive and diverse, which includes two dimensions: that stakeholders can actually use it, and that the contents include different types of knowledge. Third, the research information should be provided in forms that empower interrogation by stakeholders, so that they can retrieve and construct the descriptions of science and technology that are more appropriate for their context. This last step implies efforts to make visible many scientific contributions from the global south which are currently invisible. We call this vision “the multiversatory”: an approach to the observation of science that facilitates pluralistic analyses of the knowledge created across a variety of places and contexts, the pluriverse.
