A Practice-Based Model of Access for Science

Linux Kernel Development and Shared Digital Resources

Abstract

In this paper I argue that analyses of access to the contexts and work of ‘e-science’ and scientific ‘cyberinfrastructures’ are hindered by models that assume fixed roles for contributors and users and undervalue the joint ‘reworking’ of scientific data that is one of the central strengths of such approaches. Using a community of Free/Libre Open Source software (FLOSS) developers as a complementary case, I develop an alternative practice-based model of access that focuses on the particular sets of social and technical knowledges that allow individuals to work together to develop and maintain shared resources. Importantly, this model of access puts the practices of ‘reworking’ as central rather than peripheral to human activity. Access within this framework is characterized as the ability to shift between individual and joint, mediated work, and to understand and manipulate the multiple representations of shared objects such shifts require.