Abstract1

The article asks about the epistemological implications of Open Science from a theological and computer science perspective. The focus is on the technical dimension of Open Science: To locate theology, it is determined whether and how theology can be understood as a data-based science and what the relationship between data-based and hermeneutical methods is. Three specific characteristics of open scientific practice then come into view: Open science thrives on interdisciplinary collaboration, methodological transparency, and a process-oriented science concept. In the use case of Open Access publications, concrete challenges of Open Science are identified before, and finally, basic questions of open theology are outlined in terms of scientific theory and ethics.

Much quoted and stylized as a founding myth, theology stands at the beginning of the use of digital research practices in science when the theological research on the Index Thomisticus by the Jesuit priest Roberto Busa, begun in 1946, is mentioned as (a) starting point of the Digital Humanities (DH).2 Much has happened since then – not only in terms of the technical possibilities but also in the use and reflection of these in the humanities, such as history (Digital History) or classical philology (Digital Classics), but also in theological reflection in the field of digital theology3. Digital Humanities not only offer new methods and new hermeneutic questions4, but also new research practices. These are discussed under the “Open Science” banner: collaboration, methodological transparency, and process-oriented science enable productive and efficient digital research. The guiding principle is the availability of information and knowledge, which is reflected in debates about the accessibility of data (Open Data) and methods (Open Methods), new forms of digital publications (Open Access), participatory forms of research (citizen science) and the growing importance of science communication.

The key term “Open Science” combines interests in technical digital innovations in science (technical dimension) and the associated scientific practices (scientific-theoretical dimension) with research and information ethics programs to determine the place and task of science in society (research ethics dimension). As such a program concept, Open Science is also important in terms of research policy, especially in the debate about the place and importance of science in society (political dimension), which has been reawakened after the coronavirus pandemic.5 In all four dimensions, Open Science is understood as an innovation in scientific work, depending on the focus of technological development, scientific practices, social demands on science, and the direction of research policy.

In this mixed situation, these considerations from a theological and informatics perspective ask about the implications of the key concept of Open Science in and for theology and the specific novelty in the structure of scientific-theological work. The starting point for this is the technical dimension of the term and the associated implications for the theory of science. This is because the “open” scientific practices outlined above lead to frictions and ambivalences of a technical, professional-theoretical, and scientific-theoretical nature – not only but also in theological research. The approach via the technical dimension allows precise access to the transformation processes of science in digital scientific practices, in which the programmatic political and ethical dimensions of the term become tangible – or not.

The dimensions of Open Science as a technical, scientific-theoretical, political, and ethical guiding concept are first differentiated in an introduction to the term and the associated concepts. In the second part, a technical understanding of Open Science is used to discuss whether and how theology can be understood as a data-based humanities discipline and the relationship between data-based and hermeneutic methods. Following this fundamental clarification, the third part focuses on three specific affordances of Open Science practice from the perspective of the science theory: Open science thrives on interdisciplinary collaboration, methodological transparency, and a process-oriented concept of science. The practical field of Open Access publications is then used to discuss specific challenges of Open Science. Finally, the political and ethical dimensions of the term will be discussed in relation to the question of “open theology”.

Open Science – Ethical, Technical, Political and Scientific-theoretical Dimensions

The concept of Open Science is difficult to define comprehensively: as a buzzword, it combines sophisticated debates on information ethics with political guidelines and is used to describe utopian models of society as well as for debates on research data management.6 The basis of Open Science is the concept of Open Knowledge: “Knowledge is open if anyone can freely access, use, change, and pass it on – at most on the condition that its origin and openness are preserved.”7 Building on this, Kraker et al. (2011) define: “Open science means opening up the research process by making all of its outcomes, and the way in which these outcomes were achieved, publicly available on the World Wide Web.”8 Open Science includes six principles: First, the documentation of the methods used and the process behind them (Open Methods); second, the use and provision of open-source technology (Open Source); third, the free publication of the data created (Open Data); fourth, a form of publication that is usable and accessible to all (Open Access); fifth, transparent and comprehensible quality assurance through open peer review (Open Peer Review); and six, the use of free and open materials in university teaching (Open Educational Resources).9 The openness of science is not a binary opposed to an assumed closedness but a gradual process with many steps to facilitate free access to research objects and results.

This differentiation already hints at the various dimensions of Open Science: If Open Science in the sense of Open Knowledge is primarily understood as the opening of science to and for society, Open Science is primarily an ethical concept, or more precisely, an information ethics concept.10 This is older and theoretically independent of digital forms of science: Open Science, in this sense, existed and still exists before and alongside digital science – especially in theology with its multiple networks in political and church public, with a broad tradition of educational work in academies, for example, and much more. Open Science is less technically motivated than an expression of a perceived social responsibility or an educational mission – and, therefore, an ethical program concept. This understanding follows – taking up a distinction made by Fecher and Friesike (2013)11 – the “public school” and the “democratic school” of Open Science: The “public school is concerned with the accessibility of knowledge creation” and argues for an opening of the scientific discourse through digital technologies, both in terms of the research process and in terms of the comprehensibility of scientific results.12 Open Science as democratic science (democratic school) argues for the accessibility of knowledge based on the right to information and the accessibility of publicly funded knowledge. This ethical dimension of the term explains the impetus – often even the pathos - with which the term is sometimes associated: Open Science is then supposed to initiate nothing less than a scientific revolution and contribute to an “open society” through new forms of knowledge dissemination.13 These lines of reasoning explain the great importance attached to science communication.14 Attempts to involve non-scientific people in scientific projects (citizen science) are aimed at an interdependent relationship between science and society.15

A technical understanding of Open Science has developed parallel to this ethical dimension. After all, its current upswing is largely due to the possibilities of digital science: more research capacities, a culture of dialogue instead of a book culture, the opening up of knowledge transfer, revisions and copies without limitations, direct communication between authors and recipients – all these are the possibilities of digital research, which in their structure favor Open Science.16 The three other schools described by Fecher and Friesike (2013) emphasize the technical dimension more strongly in this sense: the pragmatic school, for example, sees the digital tools of Open Science as an opportunity to make research and knowledge distribution more efficient. For the infrastructure school, the opening up of science is primarily a technical challenge to establish digitally supported research online and offline. Finally, Open Science as measurable science (measurement school) focuses on the possibilities of alternative measurement of impact in science and thus on establishing (also quantitative) quality standards through digital tools.

Expanding research funding instruments for digitally supported research and Open Science reflects the research policy interest in this development. What Theo Röhle demonstrates in a historical study on the development of digital humanities also applies, and perhaps even more so, to Open Science: it is the subject of “political and economic agenda setting”17 with a specific character of information ethics in the background. Open Science should and will be promoted, thus setting new standards in academic work and its financial support. This can have very practical implications if, for example, publicly funded projects have to publish Open Access and many disciplines provide no or insufficient infrastructure for this. This dimension thus forms a loud background noise to current debates on Open Science.18

In its scientific-theoretical dimension, the term can be discussed in two directions against this background: On the one hand, as an information ethics program, the research ethics implications of Open Science should be examined, especially in the context of its political dimension. On the other hand, technical innovations give rise to new scientific practices that require theoretical reflection. In doing so, it is necessary to identify which dimension of Open Science comes into view – i.e., what the key concept is being discussed as – and how these dimensions should be related to each other to avoid the irritations and misunderstandings often observed in debates about Open Science.

As outlined in the introduction, the technical dimension of the term is the starting point for the following presentation, which is to understand the changes in research practices and question them concerning their implications for the theory of science. The research ethical assumptions recognizable in these shifts are highlighted and discussed in the conclusion.

Theology as a data-based science?!

On the relationship between data-based research and hermeneutic work in the context of Open Science

In its technical dimension, the key concept of Open Science finds its place above all in the debates on digital humanities. Six core dimensions of the understanding of science and the associated scientific practices can be identified in these debates: The starting point is the understanding of a data-based science whose components and results can be generated and disseminated with the support of machines. The multidimensional openness described serves, on the one hand, to facilitate transfer between scientists in order to enable collaborative work. The high importance of methodological transparency and the disclosure of the scientific process (process-oriented) also serves the goal of collaboration and quality assurance in and by the scientific community. On the other hand, openness increases the social relevance of scientific work. These six characteristics – data-based work, collaboration, methodological transparency, process orientation, quality assurance by the research community, and social relevance – can be described as the core dimensions of Open Science. Tensions between conventional science and Open Science, therefore, potentially lie in the area of scientific theory (data-based science) combined with professional theory implications (collaboration, method transparency, process orientation), as well as scientific ethics (relationship between science and society, quality assurance). The areas of tension alluded to here are currently shaping the debate, mostly implicitly. They are also in the context of structural and research policy issues – both for those who want to conduct research according to the parameters of Open Science but do not have access to the corresponding infrastructure and for those whose conventional research practices no longer meet the requirements of funding institutions or university guidelines. These are reflected on the one hand in theoretical debates, and on the other hand, initial empirical studies in surveys of scientists19 reveal central concerns. The discussion in this section is based on both dimensions. The following sections will discuss where and how these tensions affect theological scholarship from a theological and informatics perspective. Whether and how theology is understood as a data-based science depends only partly on the theological discipline in question. It depends much more on the underlying understanding of data: From a computer science perspective, a broad understanding of data is the basis of Open Science. The starting point defines (research) data as “digitally available data that is created during the research process or is its result.”20 Combined with the insight that digitally available data also includes digitized manuscripts, texts, and editions, their analysis, interpretation, and any other type of use can be seen as data-based work. This informatics perspective considerably broadens the understanding of data-based scholarship, as it shows that it is not only the digital humanities but also the use of digital infrastructure, such as the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room21, or the use of digital devices in general, that leads to the use and analysis of data. Data have, therefore, long played a central role in theology in terms of computer science. When applying the concept of data, it is irrelevant whether and to what extent computer-aided analysis plays a role in the research and knowledge process. If one follows this broad concept of data, the understanding of theology as a data-based science is not an innovation in theology, but merely a non-subject-specific description of what constitutes theological research – and humanities work in general – since computers, digital databases such as library catalogs and subject-specific software have found their way into everyday research.22 In terms of the theory of science, this is a reperspectivization of the subject of theological research from the computer science perspective. This broad concept of data, which is common in computer science, has two implications for the classification of theology in the debates on Open Science.

In the context of Open Science, the acceptance of theology as a data-based science firstly has consequences concerning methods and competencies, starting with the clear identification of the data used, possibly with an indication of how and where these data can be accessed, through to the possible publication of the data basis for better traceability of the findings. It is necessary, for example, to provide precise and explicit details of the source data used and all data sources included. In exegetical research, for example, it would be possible to compile all the verses used for a specific study into a data collection, identify them, and then publish the data in the sense of Open Data, citing the original sources: The unique identification of used data (including texts) using so-called persistent identifiers (PIDs), for example, by using digital object identifiers (DOI) for digital publications, enables other scientists to access the exact data basis. Not only the data included in the processing but also the excluded data are documented and thus made traceable.23 In addition to making data available to others, it is important to use open data formats that can be used without special commercial software.24 Finally, data literacy is a core prerequisite for handling data. This term covers all the skills required to handle data responsibly. Similar to the evaluation of literature sources, this includes the evaluation of data sources and individual parts. Other aspects include the publication of data as described above, the programming of evaluation scripts, or the use and interpretation of statistics or methods for automatic data processing and visualization. Not all skills are always equally required, but vary depending on the current investigation, or can be expanded by an interdisciplinary team. For example, the Digital Scholarship project at the University of Rostock25 is investigating the extent to which the teaching of data skills can be integrated into theological higher education.

Secondly, in terms of the theory of science, it follows from this classification that a heated debate in the digital humanities about the relationship between data-based and hermeneutic work can be constructively addressed26: The data-based scientification of the humanities according to the criteria of reproducibility and verifiability of results has been discussed critically – also in theology.27 This was triggered above all by the early – very provocative – theses of the advocates of a purely data-based epistemology: the “End of Theory”28, a paradigm shift from a “‘knowledge-driven’ to a ‘data-driven’ model of science”29 and an associated “revolution in the ‘epistemology’ of computation” 30 through big data. In the course of the “theory spring” that has become apparent in recent years,31 in the digital humanities, this intensification has been overcome in favor of a more differentiated definition of the relationship in three points. First, both the debates surrounding the concept of data32 itself also the reflection on the hermeneutic processes in the extraction and structuring of data33 to a far-reaching consensus on a necessary hermeneutic circle between data, coding, and theorizing. The Berlin study among researchers in the digital humanities clearly shows that this continues to require formalization, especially in connection with existing forms of work in the humanities, for example, in the definition of formalized data analyses in the hermeneutic circle with the research question.34 Theology has particular expertise in the epistemic and hermeneutic reflection of this circle, as it already has a wealth of experience in the differentiation and interweaving of historical, empirical, and systematizing research perspectives.35. In view of the strong normative, ethical, and, in part, political dimension of Open Science, this competence is even more urgently required here than in the field of digital humanities. Secondly, a specific challenge of data-based research lies in the location of this circle between human and machine activity: While machine access to large knowledge bases seems to offer the possibility of comprehensive processing, there are concerns in some places about possible outsourcing of “interpretation control” in the tension between “human and machine as interpretation instances”36, or “the question of where the work of the brain ends and that of the computer begins (or vice versa)”37. To counteract this, the same care and criticism must be applied to the use of machine methods as to the use of other sources. The replication crisis38 has shown in the life sciences, for example, that blind reliance on (sometimes misused) statistics has led to findings that could neither be generalized nor replicated. This shows that the reading of interpretation control does not necessarily have to be associated with the use of machine data processing but rather represents a hermeneutic challenge for all data-based research. The data-driven approach thus offers a comprehensible and reproducible way of generalizing and transferring “small” studies. However, this is only possible if the education also includes aspects of data literacy and the work takes place in interdisciplinary teams. At this point, the field has the opportunity to counter the criticism of “subjective thought experiments” with an objective one (because it is not looking for “significant” results and is grounded in theory). The hermeneutic dimension of professional theory should be further considered at this point, as Stalder (2018) points out: The integration of machine processes into humanities work has not yet been a natural part of the humanities research community.39. This leads to the question of whether and to what extent work, e.g., programming, is recognized as part of scholarship.40. In the sense of the current debates on research data management, “datafication” could also lead to all research objects (including software, texts, and non-digital artifacts) being regarded as data that should be included in a publication. Third, data-based access to texts leads to new research objects and canonicalities. In his empirical study, Kaden (2016) observes a pluralization and at the same time a particularization of research fields.41 At the same time, the datafication of the objects of humanities research leads to new delimitations of canonicity42 and on the possibility of “post-canonical overall analyses” 43 and thus to the suspension of research canons. Central here is the reflection on the guiding selection criteria - not only with regard to the processing but also with regard to the available digitized material itself44

The understanding of theology as a data-based science in the broad sense of computer science thus leads, on the one hand, to an uncomplicated connection to scientific practices in other fields in the sense of Open Science. In theology itself, the objects are reformulated and expanded simultaneously. Developing the specific skills required for this is a common task for all those who are striving to further develop theology, particularly in the field of digital humanities. In the accompanying debate on the theory of science, theology can contribute a productive voice to the relationship between data-based and hermeneutic work and contribute to an open interdisciplinary research debate.

Methods and Scientific Practices of Open Science

As outlined at the beginning, the novelty of digital humanities lies only partly in the methods of digital research, as the technical developments are accompanied – enabled and conditioned – by the cultivation of specific scientific practices, in particular collaboration, methodological transparency, and process-oriented science.

Cooperative research and epistemic individualism

Open science is based to a large extent on collaborative and open research practices – be it access to digital data, the transparency of codes or open methods. Otherwise, the very time-consuming preparation and processing of data cannot be meaningfully embedded in research. A survey of Berlin researchers in the field of digital humanities confirms collaborative work as part of the researchers’ value horizon, also with regard to the “relativization or overcoming of claims to ownership and control of research results”, for example through the gradual publication of research work in progress.45 Whether and how collaborative research is actually a core component of digital research practices is, however, ambivalent: scientific reputation requires concentration and is associated with specific forms of reputation distribution, for example, through publications and authorship.46 Thus, collaborative research has so far found little expression, at least in many humanities publications – including in many fields of theology.47 The “Romantic Myth of the Solitary Scholar”48 seems to be at least partially important for the self-image of many humanities scholars – and yet is in tension with the structural, methodological, and technical requirements of digitally supported Open Science. Or, as Bartling and Friesike (2014) succinctly state: “Yet, new forms of collaboration reach far beyond our institutional understanding of doing research, which brings us to certain dissent.”49 This dissent can be specified in two directions:

First, digitally supported Open Science requires skills beyond the previous education canons in the humanities and thrives on the work of others – be it through the provision of code, the use of databases, or the collaborative development of tools. Felix Stalder observes an “increased weight of the collaborative aspects of knowledge production”, whereby the previously clear separation between the fields is becoming more permeable due to increasing referentiality.50. At this point, however, it seems pointless to set up artificial opposites: The “Romantic Myth of the Solitary Scholar”51 – which is sometimes gleefully dismissed as a cardboard figure of traditional scholarship in debates about Open Science – is also a myth for analogous forms of scholarship, since text creation is also embedded in intellectual and intertextual networks beyond Open Science – as evidenced by the references and referencing abundantly cultivated in theology, for example in footnotes and prefaces. In conventional research, these are limited by the book as a medium. The New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NTVMR) shows how open digital research environments can also enrich theological research: “The innovation of the New Testament Virtual Room of Manuscripts (NTVMR) has created potential new habits for direct collaboration between scholars in the transcription of the manuscripts.”52 Clivaz’s aim is to “foster the most efficient interactions between the NTVMR and other online platforms with New Testament manuscripts”53 in order to best preserve the Reformation idea of reading the biblical scriptures together with the help of digital possibilities.

Second, academic reputation is essentially based on the attribution of intellectual efforts to individual authors and, thus, on an epistemic individualism that is at least delimitable. This applies in particular to the publication system and the associated impact factors as a central form of academic reputation distribution.54 A look at other disciplines, in which both interdisciplinary and collaborative research and publication are already central today, shows ways of addressing reputation distribution issues and collaborative research – at least in theory: Beyond the (overly strong) interpretation of the order of authors (as in the life sciences, for example), individual components of interdisciplinary work can be assigned to one or more authors by clearly indicating the individual contributions of each author, e.g., by using the “Contributor Role Taxonomy”55. Various roles, e.g., conceptualization, handling of resources, or administration of the project, are used to make details of the research process transparent that would otherwise have remained hidden through collaborative publication. It is important to check whether and to what extent the specified roles can represent the individual aspects of the theological work and to implement appropriate subject-specific adjustments. This clarification of the work shares is particularly important in interdisciplinary contexts in order to identify common fields of research and work on them as equals. Otherwise, computer science, for example, quickly takes on the role of an auxiliary science that implements algorithms to solve problems in a specialist discipline. Clearly marking the work carried out in publications (credit) can help to clarify how the individual researchers have contributed to collaborative work.

Methodological transparency and methodological pluralism

The need for methodological transparency arises in equal parts from the understanding of data-based research and the collaborative claim: transparent and concise methods are a prerequisite and basis for both. Whether theology shares the “methodological anxiety” diagnosed by Heuser and Le-Khac (2011)56 in the humanities may be judged differently by representatives of the theological disciplines. If one understands the search for methodological transparency – beyond all provocative formulations that it is only through digital methods that “the humanities, which have hitherto proceeded unsystematically, ‘rhapsodically’, could now achieve the status of objectifiable sciences”57 – as a call to collaborative research, one can recognize in this, with Linde (2021), a “thoroughly beneficial methodological self-understanding”58 can be recognized. How this methodological transparency can be realized in the theological disciplines is another question. This is because the theological disciplines have taken very different paths in their methodological approaches, and so even the interdisciplinary discourse within theology often reveals serious methodological difficulties in understanding each other. Two misunderstandings should be avoided here:

On the one hand, against the background of the considerations on the hermeneutic circle, it is also recognizable in data-based forms of science that the digitally supported parts of Open Science do not lead to a monolithic method but rather expand and complement the existing repertoire of methods. The specifics of working in the humanities are therefore not endangered but rather challenged to contribute their own hermeneutic, conceptual, and systematic skills - as is already established in other subjects that work both data-based and hermeneutically, such as psychology. Here, too, old questions are posed in new ways in the face of new garments, but not in fundamentally different ways.

On the other hand, theology can continue to pursue its own approach to its subject areas and objects in this plurality – however, this is determined in each case on a disciplinary and individual basis. Even theological research in the sense of Open Science does not have to be absorbed into interdisciplinary methods – but it must be able to provide information about its methods and work processes. It is obvious that the resulting standardization not only enables systematization and understanding but also selection. In this respect, Müller agrees that the standardizations themselves must remain the subject of critical interdisciplinary research in order to avoid blind spots and generate new research questions.59. The hermeneutic circle described above also applies here.

Results-oriented and process-oriented science

The call for open data, methods, and publications in Open Science is closely linked to methodological requirements: This is because data and methods can – unlike in many other research fields in the humanities – be directly reused and further developed for one’s own research, and published data are also an essential quality feature of a research paper.60 Open Science thus essentially thrives on what Kaden (2016) calls process-oriented science, which is characterized by an open and dynamic form of publication.61.

The different research practices are reflected in the establishment of different publication channels and their relevance: Nanopublications62, the publication of databases and tools, and the disclosure of code – all of these are part of the scientific work process in Open Science. In conventional humanities, on the other hand, publications are more results-oriented, in the form of journal articles, monographs, or contributions to edited volumes. These publications are the subject of academic discourse at different stages: Either between preparation and publication, for example, in the case of conference proceedings, or following publication, for instance, through reviews. However, the intermediate steps of the academic process are sometimes not regularly documented, for example, in footnotes or acknowledgments. However, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive but rather reflect a different focus: Intermediate results, thought processes, codes, and the like are not the subject of publication in conventional science – but anyone who studies the forewords and footnotes of a monograph written over many years will at least be able to trace intermediate results and thought processes. Conventional science is also process-oriented in this respect, even if this usually remains implicit.

The debates surrounding Open Science can, therefore, encourage us to rethink meaningful points in time for publications in the scientific discourse process. Preprint publications of articles on currently relevant issues, collaborative discussion of chapters of emerging publications, or even the publication of the database on which an empirical study is based can be formats of process-oriented science that also advance theological research. Digital dynamic forms of publication, such as enhanced publications, offer a special opportunity for this: The aim is the “structural differentiation of the publication object into parts that can be processed and updated in different ways”, characterized by the automatic documentation of updates and deep data structuring up to full coding.63. Insofar as publications themselves become research data in this way, according to Kaden (2016) “the abolition of the structural separation between research data and publication” can be a possible consequence.64. The central question of the positioning of theology in Open Science is where and how theological research can benefit from these forms of process-oriented science and which forms of discourse and publication channels are necessary for this.

Open Access publications. An example of Open Science

Open access to publications is the topic on which many debates about Open Science – rightly – condense: This is where the question of access to science, its place, and its conditions meets the traditional interface between science and the public – in publication. This is where the technical, ethical, and political dimensions of Open Science meet in a specific way. This field of practice will, therefore, be used as an example to deepen the debate.

There is a peculiar tension in the practice of digitally supported research: on the one hand, the field of publishing seems to offer an opportunity to satisfy the emancipatory interests of scientists in Open Science: What Fecher and Puschmann (2015) refer to rather vaguely as the “reputational economy of academic research”65, Heise and Pearce (2020) explicitly link to the trend of quantitative evaluation of science through so-called impact factors, such as citation or publication figures, which has persisted since the 1990s.66. Inspired and fueled by the increasing economization of digital forms of publication, Open Science in the field of publishing was the first and strongest criticism of excessive economic or political intervention in the scientific system. The strengthening of scientists as stakeholders in the publishing system to create a truly open, non-monetarily restricted research and publication infrastructure beyond existing market-based models is a key driver for Open Science67 and is linked to the description of science as a transparent, open, falsifiable and independent social process in terms of information and research ethics.68. On the other hand, empirical studies suggest that even in fields with a high acceptance of digitally supported research in the sense of Open Science, the necessary forms of publication in the respective research communities are not yet associated with a corresponding reputation – and are accordingly little used.69. Fecher and Puschmann (2015), who explore the tension between the demand for open data and the reluctance of researchers, come to the conclusion that “there are hardly any incentives for researchers to share data” and that “reuse often fails due to inadequate data documentation”.70 Politically, Open Access has served as the marker of Open Science since the beginning of the debate on Open Science – which is also easy to regulate: for some years now, funding bodies such as the German Research Foundation or the Swiss National Science Foundation have been demanding that publications from funded projects be published Open Access. Structurally, this has not only led to the proliferation of small, sometimes obscure, purely digital publishers in recent decades but has, above all, promoted the development of a digital publication infrastructure by large commercial publishers, which are currently strongly shaping the framework conditions of the debate. In contrast, there are attempts – so far tentative in German-speaking countries – to establish Open Access structures that are either made possible by academic institutions themselves (for example, at the University of Heidelberg with the establishment of Heidelberg University Publishing or the expansion of the digital infrastructure by the Specialized Information Service for Theology) or are provided by smaller academic publishers in close cooperation with the specialist societies. Many of the problems generally discussed with regard to Open Access, particularly with regard to quality assurance, funding, and accessibility through licensing, as well as structural tensions between the requirements of research (funding) and the existing infrastructure, become apparent at a second glance when looking at problems with the current licensing models, which can at least be reduced by setting up suitable infrastructure. In detail:

Since publications are a key factor in scientific reputation and quality assurance, the search for new forms of publication is firstly sensitive in terms of professional theory. The call for Open Science and the associated shift in costs from consumers to producers has led to a flood of journals with high article processing charges (APCs) and fast publications in many fields, although analyses of quality show significant drops.71 The number of articles published in these journals through special issues by guest editors not only contributes to the flood of publications but also to a reduction in quality due to the overload of peer reviewers. While scientists, on the one hand, are contacted with several requests for peer review per week, in other areas, it sometimes takes several months before reviewers can be found for a peer review process. These problems also arise – but not only for Open Access publications: After all, models of peer-to-peer review are the basis of scientific quality assurance in all forms of science and the pressure to publish is also increasing beyond Open Access. However, the requirements are changing: For example, the “requirements for availability of documents and transparency of reviews” not only lead to new review practices, but new forms of publication also require new metrics.72. Establishing new impact factors and their weighting is perceived as a central task of digitally supported research.73 If these review practices are established, Open Access does not lead to a decline in the quality of scientific leadership. One possibility is the concept of preprints, which are explicitly published without assured peer review. Subsequent quality assurance could then be carried out, for example, through a post-publication review process.s74 Arguments regarding the lack of quality can be countered by the continuously increasing number of retractions of quality-assured articles in journals recognized as high-ranking for years. Analyses of such retracted articles have shown that they are sometimes cited several years after problems have become known.75

Second, Open Access has established itself as a business model for some large publishers in recent years: Licensing models from large publishers are predominant, which not only incur costs for authors for printing but also costs for licensing – authors and libraries, therefore, have to pay twice if, for example, the work of a department chair at their university is to be accessible. This means that financially strong research groups are more likely to be able to publish their work in such a way that it can be read and cited by anyone without additional costs. From a global perspective, this concept could lead to a shift in publication output towards the global North. The economic thresholds thus counteract the intended opening of the scientific discourse. This also applies to authors who work with many of the common licenses76 and at the same time release their work results to all others for subsequent use77.

Third and implicitly, the systemic and structural tensions of Open Science come into view in this context. These have so far been little discussed in the literature – Bartling and Friesike (2014), for example, briefly note that the reason for the reluctance to publish Open Access is probably to be found in “cultural and legal restrictions”.78. This tension is very evident in research practice, as interviews with academics show: Heise and Pearce (2020), for example, reveals the structural challenges and his dissertation – a dissertation that is continuously written and published openly according to the parameters of Open Access - testifies in its genesis to the associated legal hurdles and the possibilities of overcoming them.79 According to interviews with DH researchers in Berlin, the importance of collaborative work “is not only in contrast to a real or imagined ‘genius-aesthetic coloration’ of the humanities, but often also to the reality of working conditions”.80 According to Clivaz (2021), this necessity is supported by a pragmatic argument: as long as, for example, the critical text apparatus for the NTG is not available in Open Access, many places will not switch to a print version but will use inferior apparatuses – precisely because they are available in Open Access.81.

The experiences of other disciplines show that the challenges of current Open Access publication structures described above – with regard to quality assurance, funding, and accessibility through licensing, as well as structural tensions between the requirements of research (funding) and the existing infrastructure – cannot be completely overcome, but can be partially overcome by establishing a non-commercial public publication infrastructure or one supported by small publishers that is appropriate to the discipline. In addition to the emerging university presses, some of which offer very attractive opportunities for Open Access publication, the specialized Information Service for Theology is currently expanding its digital research infrastructure in various ways.82. In theology, for example, there are some journals that can reduce publication costs in this way and still provide quality-assured Open Access articles.83 In view of the close and familiar working relationships with small specialist publishers, it would also be possible to create innovative Open Access publication structures that could form genuine alternatives via adapted peer-to-peer review procedures and science-friendly licensing models. This can also serve to protect smaller publishers, who otherwise often can no longer be integrated due to third-party funding requirements. The establishment of institutional, publicly funded infrastructures and the development of Open Access strategies 84 in the specialist publishers in close cooperation with the specialist societies could help to promote this development and thus create alternatives to the licensing models of large publishers. In view of the subject’s connection to international debates as well as to the publication standards of other disciplines and increasingly funding bodies, the development of a corresponding digital publication and research infrastructure is also desirable in theology.

Open Theology!?

“There is as yet no consensus as to whether and to what extent the influence of digital technologies and methods is changing the foundations of the humanities. There is certainly a desire to embed digital research in all areas of the respective disciplines. Others, on the other hand, see a fundamental threat to the humanities in the form of scientification clothed in digital processes or a scientific world characterized by strong regulation based on evaluation goals and standardization pressures. Finally, there is the position that the current developments and debates surrounding the digital represent more of a new edition than a novelty in itself, but at a rather low and ahistorical level .”85 Kaden (2016) comes to this conclusion in the survey of Berlin researchers from the digital humanities cited here several times. The debate about Open Science reveals a similar breadth. The differentiation of Open Science as a technical, scientific-theoretical, political, and ethical concept proposed here allows the ambiguity to be defined differently. Novelty seems to be attributed to the guiding concept of Open Science primarily as a political concept: Nothing less than a genuine transformation of science is expected and promised through the promotion of Open Science.86. An information and research ethics approach is clearly audible here but hardly made explicit. Similarly implicit remains the question of how this program should take shape in terms of infrastructure and how it should be implemented in terms of science policy – and simply, how it should be financed. Commercial providers have so far met the need for corresponding research infrastructure, with the costs largely being passed on to individual scientists. This combination of an implicit research ethics program, put forward with the messianic impetus for the renewal of science and society, combined with research policy pressure and the simultaneous lack of provision of the necessary infrastructure, forces researchers into cost-intensive and unfavorable licensing models with large publishers, the growing resentment about “Open Science” is hardly surprising. But the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater: Research infrastructure could also be designed differently, and messianic calls for the renewal of science have already been debunked many times. A science policy debate on the infrastructure and design of Open Science also paves the way for a theoretical debate on the novelty of Open Science based on the technical dimensions of the term. In other words, the problematic design and lack of infrastructure for Open Science, as well as the political overload of the term, should not obscure the methodological potentials87 and theoretical continuities between Open Science and theological scholarship.

The final observation is that, despite all the technical innovations explained in the second and third sections, continuity with at least some aspects of theology’s understanding of science can be seen in many places in the scientific practices described. If one follows the broad concept of data, the understanding of theology as a data-based science is not an innovation in theology but merely a non-subject-specific description of what theological research – and humanities work in general – has been about since computers, digital databases such as library catalogs and subject-specific software have found their way into everyday research.88 Regarding scientific theory, this is a reperspectivization of the object of theological research from the computer science perspective. Theology can contribute its hermeneutic competence here and help to overcome the often assumed opposition between data-based and hermeneutic work.89. Theological research, in the sense of Open Science, does not necessarily have to be based on interdisciplinary methods – but it must be able to provide information about its methods and work processes. This also applies to digital research methods and their hermeneutical foundation. The specifics of work in the humanities are not jeopardized but rather challenged to contribute their own hermeneutic, conceptual, and systematic competencies.

Where and how cooperative research and process orientation are beneficial for theological work will have to be assessed differently in the disciplines of theology. As a technical requirement, it is simply necessary for data-based work in theology, too, as digitally supported research cannot otherwise be carried out in a reasonable amount of time. Databases, for example, on digital religion research or behind projects with surface reading methodology, must be published, also to reconstruct the quality of the research work and to enable progress in the field through the reusability of the data. Care must be taken to mark the respective degree of maturity of the publications clearly. In this context, it will also be necessary to discuss very precisely in theology where and how the guiding principle of reproducibility can be applied to which fields of work in the humanities: After all, databases and their analyses are just as little purely data-based and therefore reproducible as the thinking of individuals. Therefore, the criterion of reproducibility should be put in the background in favor of the reproducibility of cognitive processes.

In terms of the theory of science, the call for cooperation describes a prioritization of the epistemic community: differentiations of author taxonomies or the versioning of publication revisions, for example, are attempts to make the connections and differentiations of the research community as an epistemic community more visible. The awareness of this community is not alien to theology but is only visible in a different way than before. Text creation is also embedded in intellectual and intertextual networks beyond Open Science – as evidenced by the abundant references and references in the often so unloved footnotes in theology. These references can be regarded as a synchronous form of representation of process-oriented and collaborative cognitive achievements. The original achievement of individuals and their influence on further debates becomes all the clearer in these marked connections. Debunking the myth of the genius and, at the same time, making the intellectual contributions of individuals recognizable is also the task of digital structures of knowledge representation.

The debate about Open Access publications has made it clear that these changes are not only interesting in terms of academic theory but also require appropriate infrastructural framework conditions. In most areas, theology is still at the beginning of the technical possibilities that can facilitate collaborative, methodologically pluralistic, and process-oriented science. Developing a research infrastructure corresponding to the self-image and professional requirements of theology is an open desideratum and an urgent task for the research community.90.

As an ethical concept, Open Science encourages us to talk about the place and task of theology in the context of the information society and to reflect on our own approach to the knowledge that is generated and handed down. This question extends far beyond the technical and scientific-theoretical dimensions of the term discussed here. Here, too, it is easy to recognize connections to parts of the theological, scientific tradition – where and how individual scientists want to get involved in these debates in Open Science, some of which are highly normatively charged, depending on the concept of theology and the actors of theology in and around academic science implied by it. Both have always been the subject of theology and its self-understanding. In light of the debates surrounding Open Science, it seems that the transitions and boundaries between theology as science and theology as a reflection of the faith of all Christians, as well as the fields of action of the institutionally constituted church and religious life for an Open Science system, should be reconsidered once again and in the light of the debate surrounding Open Science.91.

This differentiation helps to avoid at least the messianic impetus that is often attached to Open Science in an ethical and political dimension:92. Just like the digital humanities, the empirical turn or whatever supposed paradigm shift may be called for, Open Science does not bring about a fundamental renewal of the sciences. Rather – at least in the field of theology – it re-emphasizes existing facets of academic self-understanding that can be revitalized with digital methods and tools. Which parts of Open Science can be meaningfully taken up in which discipline of theology for the further development of the subject is then the decisive question in the specialist disciplines. Whether and which facets of “open theology” 93 are the subjects of an open debate, to which the considerations presented here would like to contribute.

Acknowledgements

Funding statement: FK was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) –- 513300936".

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