The lurking danger of people with too much power in Open Science

History holds many lessons that we repeatedly ignore. One such lesson is about the concentration of power. When power concentrates around infrastructure that everyone depends on, accountability erodes and abuse becomes inevitable. In post-Soviet Russia, oil and gas barons emerged by embedding themselves so deeply into the nation’s energy systems that economic and political life became inseparable from their interests. In the United States, a handful of tech giants have grown into gatekeepers of communication, commerce, and knowledge, becoming juggernauts in the creation of an autocratic state. Financial institutions once deemed “too big to fail” revealed how deeply embedded power can override democratic oversight, as governments were forced to rescue systems they no longer controlled. Across these cases, the pattern is the same: when essential systems become ubiquitous, those who control them gain disproportionate influence, and the costs of their failures are externalised onto everyone else.

One of the least discussed, yet most persistent, risks in the open science ecosystem is the accumulation of power in the hands of a very small number of individuals. Ironically, open science is often framed as a counterexample to this dynamic, with a focus much more on meritocratic, community-driven movements. However, the reality is a little more complicated than that. In practice, a surprisingly small group of people sit on multiple boards, run key organisations, influence decision making and are deeply embedded across a vast array of practices and activities. They attend the same meetings, shape the same narratives, and circulate within the same closed networks; not so open after all.

This concentration of influence gives these individuals outsized control over the direction of the movements themselves. They can shape which ideas are considered legitimate, which problems are worth solving (and how), and which approaches are dismissed as unrealistic, “out of scope” or just not desired. In some cases, they even exert indirect control over who is allowed to meaningfully participate, through gatekeeping, social signalling, or quiet back-channel decisions that never make it into public discourse.

Another, growing, problem with this dynamic is just how detached many of these holders of power are from the average researcher. They spend the majority of their time on policy creation, high level discussions and in a bubble with other like-minded people. Over time this leads to disconnect with the average researcher, often resulting in these decision makers adding to workloads or suggesting unrealistic “solutions”. Their roles require them to be everywhere at once; advising, governing, fundraising, networking. Such involvement almost guarantees conflicts of interest, often financial but also reputational. Yet these conflicts are often normalised or waved away as an unavoidable consequence of “leadership” and “advocacy”. 

This raises an uncomfortable question: who actually evaluated whether these people have the leadership skills to be trusted with such power in the first place? In most cases, the answer is no one. Authority in open science is frequently self-reinforcing where visibility leads to more visibility, influence leads to more influence, and dissent is quietly discouraged.

In my experience, there is a relatively short list of individuals who consistently abuse these positions. Occasionally, this abuse takes the form of pushing personal agendas under the guise of community consensus. Most often, it’s more defensive; blocking changes they don’t like, slowing down reforms, or frustrating initiatives that threaten their standing. These actions are rarely dramatic enough to cause immediate outrage, but over time they erode trust and hollow out the very values open source claims to uphold.

Identifying these people isn’t difficult if you know what to look for. Ignore mission statements, blog posts, value statements and conference talks. Instead look at patterns of behaviour. Who shuts down conversations, who benefits from “neutral” decisions or directions, who fails to act according to the values of their organisations or affiliations. Power reveals itself far more clearly in actions than words.

This is a minority who actively abuse their positions, and that’s a very important aspect to remember. However, a greater number passively abuse their positions of trust and power, through failing to speak up or give careful consideration to their beliefs. The real problem isn’t just bad actors but an ecosystem that allows power to accumulate unchecked, while continuing to tell itself a story about openness, fairness, and decentralisation.

If open science is serious about its ideals, it has to confront this contradiction head-on. Otherwise, it risks becoming yet another movement where the language of freedom masks the reality of control. Can we learn from the tough lessons of history, or will we fail once again and allow a minority of these “openligarcs” total control?