Thesis defense Data infrastructures and knowledge governance in participatory science: An inquiry into practices and framework development

This slide deck supports the public defense of the PhD thesis Data infrastructures and knowledge governance in participatory science: An inquiry into practices and framework development, Doctoral Program on Information and Knowledge Society, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain. The defense took place on 23 February 2026 at ICM–CSIC. The presentation argues that digital infrastructures in participatory science (citizen science platforms and citizen observatories) do more than support data collection and sharing. Their technical and organisational configurations shape who can contribute, who can access and reuse outputs, and who is accountable when data travel across contexts. The talk develops this argument through an integrated conceptual framing that connects infrastructure studies (including relational and practice based views of infrastructure), knowledge infrastructure perspectives, knowledge commons scholarship, and research on citizen science participation, while also engaging equity oriented approaches to data governance. The empirical core synthesises a structured mapping of the literature and an infrastructure focused analysis of platform features and arrangements. The results highlight five claims: platforms do not have a single governance identity; governance roles shift across arenas; design choices encode governance decisions; open science does not imply uniform governance; and platforms actively distribute power across contributors, institutions, and downstream users. A key contribution presented is the SEXTANT Governance Model, introduced as a diagnostic model to examine governance across three action arenas (Ownership, Sharing, and Accountability) and to characterise how platforms adopt different role orientations in practice (for example, enabling, mediating, or gatekeeping). The final section summarises the thesis contributions for research and practice, discusses limitations and scope conditions, and outlines future directions for building more transparent, contestable, and equitable participatory infrastructures. A video recording of the thesis defense is available on YouTube: https: //www. youtube. com/live/ZUy36hYᵦE