Abstract:

The last three decades saw the evolution of a networked global science system, sustained by bottom-up collaboration and codified by journal publishing and bibliometric inclusion, which has become the epistemic leader in the natural sciences. The system is open and has facilitated all-round science development and global multi-polarity. There is ongoing synergy and also tension between global science and national purposes; since the late 2010s collaboration has been destabilised by geopolitical tensions and the assertion of national interests. The potentials of global science are also limited in another way: it is dominated by scientists and universities in the Anglosphere and almost entirely published in English. There is a fundamental lack of fit between the post-colonial worldwide distribution of capacity and the neo-colonial structure of institutional and cultural power. Taken together these factors place the future of global knowledge in question. A radical diversification of knowledge contents via a regime of multiple translations can more effectively embed the global system.

Key words: science, research, knowledge, bibliometrics, globalization, geo-politics