As part of the ‘Let’s Talk Open Science’ series, the CCSD hosted a webinar devoted to a central yet often overlooked question: how is open science implemented in a European-funded, interdisciplinary, international research project that is subject to scientific, technical, institutional, and political constraints?
This webinar featured Candice Fillaud (research engineer) and Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri (professor of Information and Communication Sciences), who are both based at Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University and the Elico laboratory. They are particularly involved in the Open Science work package of the JuDDGES (Judicial Decision Data Gathering, Encoding and Sharing) project, which was the case study for this webinar.
In this webinar, the speakers provided documented and contextualised feedback on how open science is negotiated, adjusted and redefined within a funded project through interactions between researchers, disciplines, institutions and research cultures.
JuDDGES: a project at the crossroads of disciplines
JuDDGES is a project funded by the CHIST-ERA programme. It is part of a research field that has yet to be widely explored: analysing decision-making mechanisms in the judicial field using natural language processing.
The project’s primary goal is to develop open-source tools for the automated analysis of legal documents and criminal court judgements to improve our understanding of the decision-making processes within courts. The project is based on close collaboration between teams from the United Kingdom, Poland and France, specialising in computer science, psychology, law and information science.
Beyond its scientific objectives, JuDDGES distinguishes itself through the explicit and structured integration of an open science component at the heart of the project, with its own resources. This distinctive feature makes it an especially fertile environment in which to observe open science ‘in action’. This decision was not trivial; it has positioned open science not as a set of obligations, but as a key aspect of the project’s structure.
Open science as a space for ongoing negotiation
One of the key takeaways from the webinar is that open science is presented in JuDDGES as a fundamentally negotiated process. The speakers demonstrated that openness cannot be forced upon people; rather, it is developed through ongoing dialogue between individuals with different expectations, constraints, and cultural backgrounds.
Certain disciplines, such as computer science, have a long-standing tradition of open practices, particularly with regard to sharing code, creating documentation and reusing data. However, these practices are not always recognised as open science. Conversely, openness is discussed more explicitly in other disciplines, but it faces legal, ethical or methodological limitations.
Added to this are differences related to national contexts and funding agencies, which impose frameworks, tools and timelines that can diverge significantly. Open science then becomes a form of mediation, necessitating considerable effort to clarify concepts, align terminology and find compromises.
Candice Fillaud and Chérifa Boukacem Zeghmouri use the concept of ‘open science diplomacy’ to describe this process, quoting Anne Lehmans, a professor of information and communication sciences at the University of Bordeaux. They use this concept to describe the often invisible yet essential work that involves continuous adjustments, discussions and negotiations without any explicit power struggles — though not without tension.
The “entry cost” of open science
The discussions also highlighted the ‘entry cost’ of open science in interdisciplinary research, as referred to by Candice Fillaud. This involves much more than simply complying with institutional requirements.
This includes:
- the time needed to learn open science practices and tools;
- the effort required to become familiar with the methods, standards, and vocabulary of other disciplines;
- adaptation to tools imposed by funding agencies, such as the drafting of data management plans;
- a significant intellectual investment in articulating open science, engineering, and epistemological reflection.
This cost becomes particularly apparent when the project encounters technical difficulties. When scientific production slows down, the concept of open science is also put under strain. Openness presupposes the existence of knowledge to be shared, and raises questions about how failure, uncertainty, and interim results can – or cannot – be communicated.
Observing open science being developed
Throughout the project, Candice Fillaud and Chérifa Boukacem Zeghmouri adopted a reflexive stance, observing open practices and their own role within the project. This approach inspired them to propose the concept of an ethnology of open science that pays attention to the interactions, adjustments and collective dynamics that shape practices.
This approach considers open science not just as a normative framework or a set of best practices, but also as a research subject in its own right that is embedded in specific social, institutional, and technical contexts.
This research project invites us to think of open science not as something self-evident, but as a living, negotiated and deeply collective process, by showing how it is developed and practised, with its advances and obstacles.