Open Science and Responsible Science

The motivation for this editorial arose from an episode experienced by two of the authors. During a thesis defense, when questioned by a faculty member about the instrument used in her research, a student described how difficult it had been to locate it. What began as a simple search for an instrument widely cited in the literature turned into a true ‘academic odyssey.’ Several articles that relied on the instrument did not present it in full - only a few illustrative items. The seminal study that proposed the instrument was written in a language other than English. Attempts to contact the researcher who authored the scale went unanswered. At every step, a new labyrinth emerged in the effort to locate the complete instrument. Along with it grew the feeling that something essential to scientific practice remained inaccessible.

Far from being unusual, this episode is quite representative of the transparency gap that permeates many published academic studies. Considering this, the three of us began reflecting on the current state of science and on the Open Science movement. The issue of transparency lies at the very heart of this movement, which has gained increasing prominence and adherence within academia. Motivated by the “need to reduce questionable research practices” (Aguinis et al., 2020, p. 27), Open Science is structured around three core principles - transparency, sharing, and replication - as a means of preventing or reducing fraud (Guzzo et al., 2022). As Martins (2020) emphasizes, this represents a cultural shift that advocates broad transparency across all stages of scientific production, from planning to dissemination, and seeks to rebuild trust in science, whose credibility has been undermined by recurrent cases of scientific misconduct (Bergh et al., 2017; Honig et al., 2018).

It is within this context that the Journal of Contemporary Administration (RAC) positions itself as a journal committed to the principles of Open Science. Over recent years, RAC has progressively incorporated practices aimed at enhancing transparency, encouraging the sharing of data, research materials, and procedures, and valuing reproducibility, while respecting the epistemological and methodological specificities of the diverse approaches that coexist within the field of Management. This editorial, therefore, does not stem from an external or critical stance toward the Open Science movement, but rather from a situated reflection grounded in the journal’s concrete editorial practice.

When assessing its effects, the Open Science movement has promoted undeniable advances: it broadens access, enables public scrutiny of research methods, fosters collaboration, helps restore the legitimacy of science (Klebel et al., 2025) and may increase efficiency and reduce publication timelines (Guzzo et al., 2022). At the same time, however, it also entails risks when it becomes dogmatic or is treated as a panacea for all the problems of modern science (Mirowski, 2018).

As one of society’s systems (Roth, 2021), the field of scientific research should not be taken for granted, nor should its continuity and growth be assumed to be guaranteed. First, this field competes with other social systems for a share of society’s limited resources, and its existence depends on its ability to acquire and sustain not only essential resources but also prestige and social legitimacy. Moreover, its growth may lead generate self-destructive effects if it fails to meet three fundamental requirements for its continued existence and healthy development (Fleck, 2026): (1) promoting renewal, so as to remain relevant to society; (2) fostering integrity, not only by productively articulating its members but also by ensuring ethical conduct; and (3) generating sufficient slack to set in motion renewal and integrity-building processes, as well as to function as a buffer against significant environmental disturbances (Fleck, 2026). In several respects, the principles of Open Science pose new challenges to the scientific field, especially when interpreted or implemented in a homogeneous or uncritical manner, potentially undermining the fulfillment of these requirements for healthy growth and continuity.

The Open Science movement

The Open Science movement emerged as a response to a problem that has become increasingly evident: the difficulty of fully understanding, reproducing, and trusting the scientific knowledge that is produced. By advocating greater transparency regarding research stages and the decisions that guide scientific practice, Open Science seeks to make science more accessible - not only in terms of publications, but also in terms of processes, choices, and justifications. As Maedche et al. (2024) emphasize, this is a movement aimed at dismantling the ‘ivory towers’ of knowledge by making both scientific outcomes and processes open, accessible, and reusable, thereby strengthening public trust in science and accelerating innovation. This perspective understands knowledge not as a product to be consumed, but as a collective good, built and refined collaboratively.

In this sense, Open Science reconnects with foundational values of the scientific ethos, insofar as the movement is anchored in classic normative principles such as communality - the idea that methods, data, and discoveries collectively belong to the scientific community and should be freely shared - and universalism, according to which knowledge should be evaluated based on its merit rather than on the position, origin, or identity of those who produce it (Banks et al., 2019). These principles, originally proposed by Merton (1942), reflect a longstanding belief in science as a cooperative, impersonal enterprise oriented toward the common good. Accordingly, practices such as study preregistration, the sharing of data and analytical code, and the use of open platforms represent contemporary efforts to materialize these normative values, reinforcing standards of integrity, collective responsibility, and legitimacy within the scientific field (Limongi & Rogers, 2025a, 2025b; Rogers & Limongi, 2025).

Had this paradigm been fully embedded in everyday academic practice, the ‘odyssey’ experienced by the student and mentioned at the beginning of this editorial would likely not have occurred. The instrument she sought would have been available in accessible repositories; translations and adaptations would have been properly documented; and studies that employed it would have left clear methodological ‘traces.’ What revealed itself to her as a labyrinth could, under an Open Science scenario, have been transformed into an open and clearly marked path.

Tensions and challenges inherent to Open Science

The triad of Open Science principles - transparency, sharing, and replication - emerged from the laudable pursuit of improving research practices, eliminating morally questionable behaviors in science, and increasing the efficiency of scientific work. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the advancement of the Open Science movement also brings challenges that cannot be ignored. These challenges do not stem from weaknesses in the movement itself but rather from its consolidation and institutionalization, which make tensions between openness, epistemological pluralism, and the governance of scientific practices more visible. When Open Science is reduced to a mere formal requirement - a checklist to be complied with - the very principles of the scientific “ethos” that sustain it risk being lost from view. As Mirowski (2018) cautions, part of the enthusiasm surrounding openness has been accompanied by a process of institutionalization that, rather than opening science, may subject it to new logics of standardization and control.

Science, after all, is not a homogeneous field: it is built upon multiple epistemologies and methodological traditions. Applying the same parameters of openness uniformly across all forms of research can, paradoxically, constrain what the movement seeks to expand. As Pratt et al. (2020) observe, equating transparency with replicability - appropriate for quantitative models - becomes problematic when imposed on qualitative approaches that value interpretation, inductive reasoning, reflexivity, and context. Similarly, Guzzo et al. (2022) point out that unrestricted data sharing may be unfeasible - and even unethical - in studies involving sensitive information, trust-based relationships, or intellectual property. Another challenge is raised by Leonelli (2023), who argues that interpreting openness solely as the sharing of resources risks transforming Open Science into a technocratic enterprise, centered on the circulation of objects and data rather than on meaningful communication among researchers. Such a logic may reduce epistemological diversity and perpetuate epistemic injustices, favoring dominant research practices and contexts at the expense of local or marginalized forms of knowledge.

The effects of Open Science on the healthy growth and continuity of the scientific field

As Guzzo et al. (2022) observe, “Open Science practices clearly emphasize the hypothetico-deductive model of theory testing and building and consequently shift disciplines away from alternative forms of theorizing that are especially powerful in applied research” (p. 449). The central issue, therefore, does not lie in the principles of Open Science per se, but rather in the risk of translating them into universal and uniform criteria of scientific quality, which tend to privilege certain forms of theorizing over others that are equally relevant. Living as we do in a world of constant transformation, excessive conformity to standardized models may progressively distance scientific production from societal needs, demands, and expectations, thereby undermining both its capacity to generate value for society and its ability to meet the requirement of renewal.

Moreover, the production of homogeneity detached from relevance may affect the scientific field in additional ways. In the absence of effective value creation, the attainment of respect and social legitimacy may be compromised, which in turn affects the field’s ability to attract human talent, secure public or private financial resources, and meet the requirement of generating slack. Furthermore, by keeping different scientific branches and approaches separate, fragmentation undermines the development of synergies, thereby hindering the fulfillment of the integrity requirement. In sum, meeting the three requirements for the healthy growth and continuity of the scientific field - promoting renewal, fostering integrity, and generating slack - may prove to be a considerable challenge.

These tensions make clear that openness, while essential, cannot be understood as an end in itself. The challenge is not to multiply transparency procedures, but to discern when, how, and why to open. Practicing Open Science, therefore, requires more than protocol compliance: it requires responsibility. In other words, the debate at stake is not merely about opening science, but about how to do so responsibly, preserving the pluralism that characterizes the scientific enterprise and preventing the ideal of transparency from becoming yet another mechanism of conformity.

The imperative of responsible science

In this context, science appears to find itself at a crossroads. Despite its many undeniably valuable contributions, certain practices place the very reputation of science at risk, making it imperative for the scientific community to confront this challenge in a responsible manner. The Open Science movement has taken an important and necessary first step in this direction, even though, under certain circumstances, it may produce counterproductive effects for science itself when adopted in a decontextualized or excessively normative way. Still, there is no reason to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater.’ On the contrary, adopting these principles whenever possible represents an important step toward responsible science.

A second, equally relevant step involves recognizing the multifaceted, multilevel, and complex nature of the organizational phenomena we investigate. No single research approach can, in isolation, capture all the aspects and nuances of these phenomena; taken together, however, different approaches can foster significant advances in knowledge. The effort to combine distinct research approaches, although challenging, can contribute to fulfilling two central requirements for the continued and healthy existence of our field: the requirement of renewal, by promoting the production of new knowledge about organizational phenomena, and the requirement of integrity, by strengthening trust and constructive ties among specialized researchers and their respective communities.

From this perspective, efficiency and productivity can be understood in a dual manner. From a quantitative standpoint, they refer to doing more with fewer resources or in less time; from a qualitative standpoint, they may be associated with building bridges across different research perspectives to generate results perceived as valuable by social actors located beyond the boundaries of the scientific field.

Just as Fleck (2026) proposes the imperative of responsible leadership to address the tensions of organizational growth, we must think in terms of an imperative of responsible science.

• Open Science is necessary, but not sufficient: transparency, sharing, and replication must be accompanied by three requirements that sustain the health of scientific practice.

• The first is renewal, that is, the capacity to continually revisit and recombine theories, methods, and instruments.

• The second is integrity, both in the moral sense (ethics, intellectual honesty) and in the constitutive sense (cohesion of the scientific community, trust among peers).

• The third is the generation of slack, that is, creating conditions of time, resources, and space so that researchers can genuinely innovate and question, rather than merely reproduce institutionalized practices.

Understood in this way, responsible science incorporates and expands Open Science. Openness remains a central value, articulated within a broader vision of epistemological pluralism, social relevance, and the long-term sustainability of scientific practices.

REFERENCES

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• Cite as:
  Furtado, L., Fleck, D., & Chimenti, P. (2026). Open Science and Responsible Science. Revista de Administração Contemporânea, 30(1), e260041. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-7849rac2026260041.en
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  The authors reported that there was no funding for the research in this article.
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  RAC maintains the practice of submitting all documents approved for publication to the plagiarism check, using specific tools, e.g.: iThenticate.
• Data Availability
  RAC encourages data sharing but, in compliance with ethicalprinciples, it does not demand the disclosure of any means ofidentifying research subjects, preserving the privacy of research subjects. The practice of open data is to enable the reproducibility of results, and to ensure the unrestricted transparency of the results of the published research, without requiring the identity of research subjects.

Edited by

• SCIENTIFIC EDITORIAL BOARD AND EDITORIAL TEAM FOR THIS ISSUE:
  Editorial Council
  Emílio José Montero Arruda Filho (UNAMA, Belém, PA, Brazil; UFPA, Belém, PA, Brazil)
  Gabrielle Durepos (Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)
  Rafael Alcadipani da Silveira (EAESP/FGV, São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
  Patricia Guarnieri dos Santos (UnB, Brasília, DF, Brazil)
  Silvia Gherardi (University of Trento, Trento, Italy)
  Editor-in-chief
  Paula Chimenti (UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil)
  Associate Editors
  Ariston Azevedo (UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil)
  Carolina Andion (UDESC, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil)
  Cristiana Cerqueira Leal (Universidade do Minho, Portugal)
  Denize Grzybovski (IFRS, Erechim, RS, Brazil)
  Elisa Yoshie Ichikawa (UEM, Maringá, PR, Brazil)
  Fernando Luiz Emerenciano Viana (Unifor, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil)
  Gaylord George Candler (University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, USA)
  Gustavo da Silva Motta (UFF, Niterói, RJ, Brazil)
  Keysa Manuela Cunha de Mascena (Unifor, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil)
  Leonardo Marques (Audencia Business School, France)
  Ludmila de Vasconcelos Machado Guimarães (CEFET-MG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil)
  Marlon Dalmoro (UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil)
  Natália Rese (UFPR, Curitiba, PR, Brazil)
  Orleans Silva Martins (UFPB, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil)
  Tatiana Iwai (INSPER, São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
  Scientific Editorial Board
  André Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão (UFPE, Recife, CE, Brazil)
  Aureliano Angel Bressan (CEPEAD/UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil)
  Bryan Husted (York University, Canada)
  Carlos M. Rodriguez (Delaware State University, USA)
  Diógenes de Souza Bido (Mackenzie, São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
  Erica Piros Kovacs (Kelley School of Business/Indiana University, USA)
  Elin Merethe Oftedal (University of Stavanger, Norway)
  Fábio Frezatti (FEA/USP, São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
  Felipe Monteiro (INSEAD Business School, USA)
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  James Robert Moon Junior (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
  John L. Campbell (University of Georgia, USA)
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  Lucas Ayres B. de Campos Barros (USP, São Paulo, SP, Brazil)
  Luciano Rossoni (UnB, Brasília, DF, Brazil)
  M. Philippe Protin (Université Grenoble Alpes, France)
  Paulo Estevão Cruvinel (Embrapa Instrumentação, São Carlos, SP, Brazil)
  Rodrigo Bandeira de Mello (Merrimack College, USA)
  Rodrigo Verdi (MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA)
  Valter Afonso Vieira (UEM, Maringá, PR, Brazil)
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Data availability

RAC encourages data sharing but, in compliance with ethicalprinciples, it does not demand the disclosure of any means ofidentifying research subjects, preserving the privacy of research subjects. The practice of open data is to enable the reproducibility of results, and to ensure the unrestricted transparency of the results of the published research, without requiring the identity of research subjects.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  27 Mar 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Published
  02 Feb 2026