| Abstract: |
This short note illustrates how social structures and behavior of scientists
in the societal sub-system of open science resemble patterns analyzed in the
Gift, an essay written by Marcel Mauss nearly 100 years ago. The presented
analysis goes beyond existing interpretations of gift giving in science. The
latter has mainly focused on the exchange of knowledge and citations. I argue
that the Gift explains also identity, competition, co-opetition, rituals, and
punishment. Mauss’s Gift is seen as a complementary model to existing economic
and sociological approaches regularly used to analyze structures and behavior
in open science. By accentuating such an anthropological approach, I conclude
that the Gift provides explanations of the stability and the expansion of the
open science community. |