ScienceFair is an organisation that wants to redesign and rebuild our scientific knowledge infrastructure to be more fair. We have a plan for how to do it, and we're making progress towards achieving it.
This repository hosts the ScienceFair strategy and organisational documentation.
You might like to look at the ScienceFair app.
Contents
- Core mission and values
- Deliverables and core products
- Organisation
- Funding & finance
- In Progress Documents
To create a new scientific knowledge infrastructure that makes science more fair.
ScienceFair's decisions are driven by our core values: science for the global public good, fairness, freedom and openness.
Maximising the global public good should be the fundamental principle driving the organisation and operation of science. Science is a global social endeavour, largely funded by the public. The knowledge generated cannot be owned◇ by any individual or group, but belongs to all of humanity equally. When our other values do not present a clear path, we consider which path is more likely to maximise the benefit of science to humanity in general, without compromising our values.
◇ this refers to knowledge itself (facts, ideas, procedures, etc.), as opposed to literary or artistic expression related to knowledge, which are intellectual property under international law.
Science should be fair ◇. We believe all people should be equally able to access and benefit from the outputs of science, and to take part in its culture and processes. The current scientific system is deeply unfair, systematically directing the benefits of science to those who already have the most privilege. We are committed to improving fairness in science. In particular, we place fairness at the core of our governance and the design of our technological infrastructure for discovering, accessing, using and contributing to scientific knowledge.
◇ we interpret fair to mean the application of social, distributive, and interactional justice.
People should be free◇ to interact with science on their own terms. This includes how they access and use knowledge, the people and organisations they interact with, and the systems, structures and tools they use. People should be protected from attempts to monitor, control or punish their lawful choices. Currently a small number of organisations dictate the terms for interacting with science. They operate inflexible platforms that serve the needs of very few, exclude many, and control access to knowledge. We are committed to building an alternative scientific knowledge infrastructure, maximising the freedom of people to control their own experience, privacy and information, and limiting the power of any entity to control or abuse any other entity.
◇ freedom in this context means the freedom of individuals to choose and take actions without harming or being harmed by others. It specifically does not include the freedom of individuals to harm others.
The processes, technology, communities and decisions making up the scientific knowledge infrastructure should be open. This means their mechanisms and information should be transparent and accessible, their use and benefits should not be controlled by any particular entity, and that the power of people and organisations within the system should be limited, and those holding it must be accountable.
- To design and document a robust, scalable technological infrastructure for disseminating, discovering and interacting with scientific knowledge that enshrines the values above.
- To build a sustainable ecosystem of Open Source software tools implementing the designed infrastructure.
- To encourage innovation by enabling the discovery and use of open science, source and data projects that seek to improve the fairness of scientific knowledge infrastructure.
- To encourage the growth of communities that enshrine the values above, and which eventually drive and support the infrastructure and technology envisaged.
- Roadmap
- Two Page Overview and Pitch - edited by DCR.
- Draft slide deck - from Rik and Jelena's meeting, not edited yet.
- Marketing Plan - from Rik and Jelena's meeting, not edited yet.
- Personas
- All docs