# Diverse sources of normativity in open science and their implications for ethical governance

## TL;DR

This paper discusses ethical challenges in open science and argues for a pluralistic governance approach to address diverse norms and practices.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a pluralistic and deliberative governance framework for open science to address its heterogeneous normative foundations.

## Key findings

- Open science faces ethical challenges and fairness concerns due to its diverse practices and normative foundations.
- A comprehensive ethical governance framework is needed to address potential harms in open science.
- A pluralistic and deliberative approach is proposed to manage the diversity within scientific practices.

## Abstract

Over the past decade, open science (OS) has emerged as a global science policy and research initiative with implications for most aspects of research, including planning, funding, publishing, evaluation, data sharing and access. As OS has gained increasing prominence, it has also faced substantial criticism. Whether it is the worries about the equality of access associated with open-access publishing or the more recent allegations of OS benefitting those who act in the private interest without giving back to OS, there are, indeed, many potential as well as actual harms that can be linked to the practice of OS. These criticisms often revolve around ethical challenges and fairness concerns, prompting the question of whether a comprehensive ethical governance framework is needed for OS. This commentary contends that owing to the heterogeneous nature of the normative foundations of OS and the inherent diversity within scientific practices, a pluralistic and deliberative approach to governance is needed.