New Modes of Knowledge Production to Address Societal Challenges

The growing complexity of knowledge production in contemporary science is increasingly challenging social researchers to reconsider the organization, coordination, and governance of research. Over the past years, research infrastructures in the social sciences have undergone substantial transformations, driven not only by the expansion of data availability and computational methods, but also by the recent diffusion of generative artificial intelligence. Together, these developments have reshaped the ways in which scientific knowledge is produced, analysed, and validated. In response, researchers have progressively adopted alternative modes of knowledge production that are more open, networked, and participatory, moving beyond traditional scientific work. A driver of this shift is the rapid growth of computational social science, which relies on large-scale data, advanced analytical tools, and distributed expertise. These developments require new platforms for data management, interoperability, and collaboration, as well as novel forms of interdisciplinary teamwork that conventional organisational arrangements often struggle to support. The traditional methods of research, which usually focus on small, relatively uniform teams and fragmented data sources, are becoming increasingly insufficient to keep up with the scale, complexity, and speed of modern research challanges. As a result, social scientists are increasingly turning towards large-scale collaborative models and deeper interdisciplinarity as essential strategies for addressing today’s grand societal challenges, including sustainability transitions, social inequalities, and rapid technological change. Against this background, research infrastructures in social science play a pivotal role. By structuring access to data, enabling comparability across contexts, and supporting collaborative research practices, they provide the backbone for these emerging modes of knowledge production. In this evolving landscape, the systematic study of research funding instruments, research projects, scientific publications, and collaboration structures has become central for understanding how knowledge is produced and circulated. These dimensions also constitute some of the key strands of work currently being developed within the FOSSR project. Within FOSSR, particular attention has been devoted to identifying gaps in the literature on knowledge production that can be addressed by exploiting advanced analytical techniques.