Rolfes, J. D. (2026) The Paradox of Reform Resistance: How Dominant Scientific Structures Convert Reform Pressure into Institutional Reproduction. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Scientific institutions are committed to evidence-based reasoning and have generated robust empirical evidence of structural dysfunction in their own systems of funding, publication, career selection, and epistemic recognition. Reform proposals are abundant: preregistration, lottery-based funding, double-blind review, alternative metrics, participatory evaluation, and open access infrastructures. The toolkit is well stocked. The structures remain largely intact. This paper argues that the persistence of reform resistance is not explained primarily by a lack of knowledge or alternatives, but by four entangled mechanisms through which dominance structures convert reform pressure into institutional reproduction: cognitive conservatism, self-reinforcing feedback loops, epistemic dominance, and the selection bias of reform agents. These mechanisms are presented as an exploratory taxonomy, a first mapping of a complex causal terrain rather than a settled causal account. The co-optation of the Open Access movement serves as the anchor case because it is a forensically transparent contemporary instance in which all four mechanisms operate simultaneously: a reform aimed at democratizing access to publicly funded knowledge was partially absorbed into APC-based and transformative-agreement models that preserve the position of incumbent publishers while shifting exclusion from reading to publishing. The paper concludes that genuine structural change requires more than persuasion or pilot reforms: it requires diversified gatekeeping, circuit-breaking mechanisms, independent accountability, pluralized epistemic standards, and reform governance that includes actors not selected through the dominant prestige pathway.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | reform resistance; dominance structures; open access; Matthew effect; science governance; structural change; epistemic injustice | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Science and Policy General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. J. D. Rolfes | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jun 2026 18:34 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 08 Jun 2026 18:34 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 29963 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Science and Policy General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Date: | 6 June 2026 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/29963 |
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