Federico Vasen

University of Buenos Aires | UBA · Institute of Educational Sciences

The conception of "relevance" that is implied in every science policy is one of its most political components, since it enables the judgment on which kind of research should be promoted and summarizes the objectives of the whole policy. This article aims to explore the history of science policy in the 20th Century and seeks to identify the concepti...

Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with actors from public, private and associative sectors, we explore the expansion of genetically modified soy in Argentina and we aim to figure out how the neoliberal “globalized privatization regime” unfolded in a peripheral location. Our case points at two inherent contradictions with such a regime's main t...

Resumen Los investigadores están sujetos a múltiples instancias en las que se evalúa su producción académica. Basados en indicadores bibliométricos y en información sobre indexaciones, los consejos nacionales de ciencia y tecnología han emitido directrices para clasificar las revistas. En este trabajo realizamos una comparación de los sistemas impl...

This editorial introduces the thematic collection on STS and innovation. The collection includes eleven Engagements exploring the relationships between innovation studies (IS) and STS across various geographies. There is also an Original Research Article in this issue, by Susan Bell, Patrick Grzanka, Kelly Joyce, and Laura Senier, examining masking...

Transnational dialogues in STS matter and are at the heart of ESTS, exemplified by this issue. Two Original Research Articles, the first by Lucía Céspedes (2023) and the second co-authored by Gonçalo Santos, Naubahar Sharif, and Jack Linzhou Xing (2023) respectively, consider what is lost in translation—in the practice of astronomy in Argentina, an...

Evaluation procedures play a crucial role in science and technology systems, particularly within academic career structures. This article focuses on an approach to evaluation that has gained prominence in Latin America over the past four decades. This scheme assesses the individual performance of academics based on their academic activities and out...

In this editorial, the ESTS editorial collective (EC) reports on various events it had organized at the 2022 ESOCITE/4S joint meeting held at the Universidad Iberoamericana-Puebla in Cholula, México. The EC hosted a journal “happy hour” meet-up and several roundtables on the “Politics of Language,” the challenges and opportunities for open research...

In this editorial, we describe the work that has been undertaken by the ESTS editorial collective (EC) over the last two years towards establishing a publishing infrastructure for open research data. A broad movement in the scholarly community is pushing towards data sharing or “open data,” particularly in the natural sciences and medicine. Recogni...

A partir de una muestra de investigadores de historia y sociología en Argentina, se analizan las características de su producción académica en el periodo 2007-2016 en lo referido a los formatos más utilizados, los idiomas más frecuentes y el país de edición de las revistas. Al respecto se concluye que las formas de difusión ligadas a la investigaci...

Technology development and innovation are fundamentally different from scientific research. However, in many circumstances, they are evaluated jointly and by the same processes. In these cases, peer review—the most usual procedure for evaluating research—is also applied to the evaluation of technological products and innovation activities. This can...

In the present work we develop some core ideas to strengthen the inclusion of humanistic knowledge in scientific and technical education sustained in the mainstream definition of engineering provided by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In order to achieve such a goal we developed a novel formal definition of the term ‘...

Since the 1960s, different research evaluation mechanisms have been created in the Ibero-American region. In this paper we focus on systems aimed at classifying and recognizing individuals based on their past research performance. These policy instruments, which we call National Researcher Categorization Systems (NRCS/SNCI), are present in most cou...

Book review

The evaluation of technological production in agricultural sciences presents specific challenges. Unlike scientific publications, for which there are standardized evaluation criteria, technological developments require a more multidimensional and situated approach. This article analyzes a technology certification scheme developed by the National In...

De evaluar diferente a orientar como siempre. Burocratización e inercias institucionales en la implementación de una política científica orientada al desarrollo tecnológico y social * De avaliar de forma diferente a orientar como sempre. Burocratização e inércia institucional na implementação de uma política científica orientada para o desenvolvime...

Los Proyectos de Desarrollo Tecnológico y Social (PDTS) surgieron como una respuesta derivada al problema de evaluación académica en Argentina. Su surgimiento data de las comisiones convocadas por el entonces Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva en 2011 y 2012 que buscaban revisar los parámetros de evaluación de la investigació...

This paper aims to analyze innovation pathways for stem cell technology in Argentina. Firstly, we present a theoretical perspective on the co-construction of regulation and technology development, positing four main tensions that underlie regulatory building and the shaping of national strategies for regenerative medicine. Regulation is understood...

Medicine regulation worldwide has undergone a process of regulatory diversification. The evidence-based medicine (EBM) paradigm, centered on multi-phase randomized controlled trials, is increasingly contested and replaced by new models of clinical validation. To explain these changes, STS research has cited just a few factors, e.g. growing pressure...

This chapter explores regulatory developments for nonhematopoietic stem cell therapies in Japan, China, India, Argentina, Brazil, the USA, and the European Union. The chapter illustrates that the research methods, ethical standards, and approval procedures for the market use of nonhematopoietic stem cell interventions that have undergone an importa...

The article analyzes the signals received by social researchers in Mexico regarding the type of production expected from them in merit pay programs. The institutional public discourse embodied in official documents is contrasted with the description of the evaluation carried out by the evaluators themselves. The research is based in document analys...

The article analyzes the signals received by social researchers in Mexico regarding the type of production expected from them in merit pay programs. The institutional public discourse embodied in official documents is contrasted with the description of the evaluation carried out by the evaluators themselves. The research is based in document analys...

El presente artículo se propone discutir el concepto de impacto social del conocimiento en el contexto de la gestión de las instituciones de educación superior. Tomando por caso la experiencia de los autores en el diseño de un programa institucional para la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (UTN), el texto aborda en primer lugar el problema más ampl...

Universities represent a particularly interesting environment for interdisciplinary development; as institutions, they are simultaneously guardians of tradition and spaces for experimentation. This article focuses on initiatives for the creation of institutional spaces for interdisciplinary research in three Latin American universities: Universidad...

Academic researchers are subject to multiple evaluation instances to assess the quality and impact of their scientific production. Based on bibliometric indicators and indexing services, national science and technology councils have issued guidelines for classifying journals. This paper compares the guidelines implemented in Argentina, Mexico and C...

In this paper we address two initiatives for the construction of an institutional space for interdisciplinary research in two Latin American universities: the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina and the University of the Republic (UdelaR) in Uruguay. They were two innovative initiatives that broke with the organization of university in fa...

The Responsible Research and Innovation framework emerged from the reflection on a socially desirable form of development of emerging technologies in Europe and the United States. In this chapter, I discuss how to further elaborate the framework in order to effectively engage in a dialogue with science, technology and innovation (STI) policy in the...

En Argentina las células madre son identificadas por científicos y funcionarios de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (cti) como una prioridad estratégica. Esta definición de políticas se ve traducida en el creciente esfuerzo estatal para promover la construcción de capacidades en esta tecnología a través de programas, financiamiento y debates para g...

In this article, we explore regulatory developments in stem cell medicine in seven jurisdictions: Japan, China, India, Argentina, Brazil, the USA and the EU. We will show that the research methods, ethical standards and approval procedures for the market use of clinical stem cell interventions are undergoing an important process of global diversifi...

Las políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación (CTI) suelen poner al crecimiento económico y la competitividad como uno de sus objetivos centrales. En este artículo, planteo que en los últimos años han surgido marcos conceptuales en las políticas de CTI que discuten la adecuación de las políticas convencionales para casos en los que se plantean...

The first generation of science policies in Latin America were inspired by the linear model of innovation based on Vannevar Bush’ Science: the endless frontier and UNESCO postwar stance on freedom of research. Informed by these ideas, during the late 1940s and the 1950s, research councils focused on basic research were created throughout the region...

En este artículo presentamos resultados de investigación en torno al impacto de propuestas que objetivisan la investigación científica hacia formas de conocimiento que contri- buyan a la solución de problemas sociales, demandas socio-productivas y prioridades definidas por los organismos de ciencia y tecnología. Indagaremos un nuevo instrumento de...

En el “I Encuentro Nacional de Cátedras de Introducción a la Ingeniería” se han identificado distintos enfoques curriculares para las asignaturas introductorias a la profesión. Un “Modo 1”, que propone una mirada basada en la idea de proporcionar al estudiante una visión temprana de la ingeniería, descriptiva e informativa; un “Modo 2”, que contemp...

El presente trabajo reflexiona sobre la interacción entre regulación tecnológica y valores sociales desde un estudio del caso farmacéutico. Partiendo de las distinciones entre riesgo material y riesgo social propuestas por Tula Molina, indaga acerca de las regulaciones vigentes sobre los medicamentos. En primer término, se analizan los valores de c...

RESUMEN Si bien los vínculos entre las ideologías del progreso y los avances tecnológi-cos son a menudo muy poderosos, asistimos actualmente a una crítica so-cial cada vez más aguda de las consecuencias de estos procesos. El pre-sente artículo, escrito por cuatro investigadores europeos y latino-america-nos, se ocupa en primer término de la forma e...