Open Science in a State of Exception
Agamben defines the state of exception as a condition in which institutional rights are suspended while regulatory control persists. As a researcher whose former university was dissolved by decree, I work within such a space—not as one of epistemic absence, but of continuity through ongoing scientific production.
Since 2009, I have developed the **Physiotherapy E-Book Series (**e.g., Basic Kinesiological Analysis, Knee Arthroplasty Internship Book) as an Open Educational Resources initiative. After the institutional disruptions of 2016, this work has continued under conditions resembling a state of exception, sustaining educational access and disciplinary knowledge beyond formal university structures. In parallel, I maintain open-source tools and dataset repositories on platforms such as GitHub and Zenodo to support transparent and reproducible research.
The loss of formal institutional affiliation also brings infrastructural barriers. Many academic services—such as GitHub, Google Workspace, or Microsoft research programs—require .edu email verification or institutional credentials, effectively excluding universityless researchers. Under these conditions, access to PubMed Central’s open-access subset, together with personal computing and internet infrastructure, becomes one of the few remaining gateways to scientific participation.
For scholars operating under such conditions, Open Science is not merely an ideal but a practical foundation of epistemic continuity. I welcome perspectives, experiences, and suggestions on how Open Science contributions can be strengthened under conditions resembling a state of exception.