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zackbatist committed Sep 20, 2023
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In their seminal vision for open archaeology, Beck and Neylon [-@beck2012 480-481] identified the movement as comprising a series of principles and practices "predicated on promoting open redistribution and access to the data, processes and syntheses generated within the archaeological domain" with the aim of "maximizing transparency, reuse and engagement while maintaining professional probity". Open archaeology therefore promotes more thoughtful scholarly communication practices, most notably in operations relating to publishing, data-sharing, education, and review processes. Archaeologists are also actively engaged in open source software development as means of sharing their research processes and creating tools and resources for general use.

However, academic open source has a complicated relationship with open source as practiced by professional software developers, which has its own distinct history and is framed by different objectives, challenges, and value regimes. Despite this, the open science movement, within which open archaeology emerged, draws direct inspiration from open source. For instance, the Open Knowledge Foundation [-@openknowledgefoundation2023] publishes a widely accepted defitnion of "open" in the context of scholarly communication that explicitly refers to the definition of "open source" published by the Open Source Initiative [-@opensourceinitiative2007], an authoritative open source advocacy group. The open science movement further mimics open source by operationalizing scholarly communication through technical infrastructures and protocols that closely resemble systems and processes designed to develop open source software (e.g., the use of plaintext, line-resolution version control, emphasis on formal licencing, the general hacker aesthetic). However, academic work, including the development of academic software, differs signififcantly from the work involved in massive open source projects that literally run the internet, such as the Linux kernel, openSSL, and the Firefox web browser. While they may use similar tools and technical protocols to manage coding operations, the open science and open source movements are governed by different social and professional warrants and interests. In other words, publishing code openly on the web has different meanings, impacts and implications for archaeologists and professional software developers [@kelty2008 xx].
However, academic open source has a complicated relationship with open source as practiced by professional software developers, which has its own distinct history and is framed by different objectives, challenges, and value regimes. Despite this, the open science movement, within which open archaeology emerged, draws direct inspiration from open source. For instance, the Open Knowledge Foundation [-@openknowledgefoundation2023] publishes a widely accepted definition of "open" in the context of scholarly communication that explicitly refers to the definition of "open source" published by the Open Source Initiative [-@opensourceinitiative2007], an authoritative open source advocacy group. The open science movement further mimics open source by operationalizing scholarly communication through technical infrastructures and protocols that closely resemble systems and processes designed to develop open source software (e.g., the use of plain text, line-resolution version control, emphasis on formal licencing, the general hacker aesthetic). However, academic work, including the development of academic software, differs significantly from the work involved in massive open source projects that literally run the internet, such as the Linux kernel, openSSL, and the Firefox web browser. While they may use similar tools and technical protocols to manage coding operations, the open science and open source movements are governed by different social and professional warrants and interests. In other words, publishing code openly on the web has different meanings, impacts and implications for archaeologists and professional software developers [@kelty2008 xx].

The relationship between open science and open source is also complicated by rhetorical claims that have a questionable connection to how academics actually _do_ open source.
Does academic open source actually make research processes more transparent and improve research outcomes?
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