The Gift and Open Science

Henrik Egbert ()

Bulgarian Economic Papers from Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski - Bulgaria // Center for Economic Theories and Policies at Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski

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.

Keywords: open science; scientific competition; gift; Marcel Mauss; reciprocity; anthropology of open science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A14 Z11 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2018-04, Revised 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-sog
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sko:wpaper:bep-2018-04

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