Abstract: One of the ambitions outlined by France’s second National Plan for Open Science (July 2021), was to create an Open Science Lab dedicated to developing “research on research” with a focus on open science and with the objective to inform French public policy decisions. As part of the groundwork for setting up this Lab, the French Committee for Open Science called for an exploratory study to better understand the international scope and context of “research on research” (RoR), and its connections with open science as well as other research currently being carried out in metascience, science of science, and science and technology studies.
Far from presenting a static landscape, the study found that while some research on science and scientific communities are based on well-established, pre-existing academic fields and methods, other more recent trends (metascience, metaresearch, RoR, etc.) have adopted a prescriptive commitment to fostering better and more open science. It highlights the debates contemporary research on research and science is fueling around key issues such as reproducibility, evidence-based policy, integrity and inclusivity. It also echos some community-issued concerns about “reinventing the wheel” when it comes to studying science, scientific communities and their productions.