In this commentary, we collected three essays from authors coming from different perspectives. They analyse the problem of power, participation and cooperation in projects of production of scientific knowledge held by users or peers: persons who do not belong to the institutionalised scientific community. These contributions are intended to give a more political and critical point of view on the themes developed and analysed in the research articles of this JCOM special issue on Peer-to-peer and user-led science. Michel Bauwens, Christopher Kelty and Mathieu O'Neil write about different aspects of P2P science. Nevertheless, the three worlds they delve into share the "aggressively active" attitude of the citizens who inhabit them. Those citizens claim to be part of the scientific process, and they use practices as heterogeneous as online peer-production of scientific knowledge, garage biology practiced with a hacker twist, or the crowdsourced creation of an encyclopedia page. All these claims and practices point to a problem in the current distribution of power. The relations between experts and non-experts are challenged by the rise of peer-to-peer science. Furthermore, the horizontal communities which live inside and outside the Net are not frictionless. Within peer-production mechanisms, the balance of power is an important issue which has to be carefully taken into account.

How will peer to peer infrastructures, and the underlying intersubjective and ethical relational model that is implied by it, affect scientific practice? Are peer-to-peer forms of cooperation, based on open and free input of voluntary contributors, participatory processes of governance, and universal availability of the output, more productive than centralized alternatives? In this short introduction, Michel Bauwens reviews a number of open and free, participatory and commons oriented practices that are emerging in scientific research and practice, but which ultimately point to a more profound epistemological revolution linked to increased participatory consciousness between the scientist and his human, organic and inorganic research material.

Twenty five years after the introduction of the concept of “collectivization of science” by Ziman, the importance of the research team continues to suffer of a narrow space, both in scientific literature and in the definition of academic policy. The debate ranges from a macro level, represented by changes in scientific and technological research to micro-analyses on the figure of the individual researcher. Nevertheless the scientific processes are affected by the increasingly multidisciplinary nature and the plurality of actors involved, as well as the social and cultural dynamics, often overlooked if not ignored. Our contribution aims to emphasize the importance of the research groups as the elementary unit of analysis in the definition of policies and for a better governance of universities.

Key challenges and opportunities are outlined in the ERA perspective and the role of evaluation as an instrument in the socialisation of science and technology is explored. Only an integrated and highly socialised science and technology, deeply embedded in society and involving all the relevant stakeholders, can address the complex problems Europe faces today and thus improve its research position and competitiveness worldwide.

Science and Technology Studies have discussed extensively over the social factors that hinder and facilitate scientific-technological activities. Some authors even have attempted to grasp the cultural and power conflicts involved in the definition of concepts, paradigms and research programmes. I will present here a reflection on the concept of 'scientific mediation' which provides a complementary approach about the social networks that constrain, help and constitute scientific research activities. A definition of this concept and some empirical examples will be provided. Nonetheless, I want to emphasise the social processes and contexts that allow us to understand mediations as something else than mere communication and conflict resolution. Secondly, I will defend such an approach in order to support scientific research, but I think that the analysis of scientific mediation needs to be clearly separated from the ideal conceptions of knowledge-society and democratic-ethos. Socialisation of science, finally, is stressed in its meaning of collectively sharing useful knowledge for the improvement of social justice.

Within the research framework programmes, the European Commission's interest in societal issues pertaining to science and technology has been increasing over time. An important step in this direction has been taken with the establishment during the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) of the theme "Science in Society" (SiS) in the Specific Programme "Capacities". From this perspective, the theoretical and practical horizon of science and technology (S&T) socialisation discussed in this issue of JCOM fits well with the SiS strategy. In fact, S&T socialisation refers, on the one hand, to the process of the adaptation of science to a changing society and, on the other hand, to the capacity of identifying and managing the social dynamics increasingly involved with scientific and technological research.

Research systems are increasingly required to be more practically oriented and to address issues which appear more promising in economic and social results, with special reference to trans-disciplinary research fields, such as nanotechnology or ICTs; policy makers show a sharp tendency to establish research priorities and to drive research systems; universities and research institutions are asked to be more transparent and open to dialogue with social actors on contents, impacts, ethical implications and practical applications of scientific and technological research. These transformations affecting both the ways in which science and technology are produced and their relationships with society pose new challenges to European research. All the aspects of research activities are concerned, including the life of the research groups, the approaches to scientific evaluation, the development of European research policies and the interaction between researchers with their social environment. Continuing a reflection started in the last issue of JCOM, Luisa Prista, Evanthia Kalpazidou-Schmidt, Brigida Blasi, Sandra Romagnosi and Miguel Martínez López offered their contribution in identifying some of the key implications and risks which these changes are bringing about, mainly in the perspective of the construction of the European Research Area.

In the last decades, production of science and technology as well as science-society relationships started changing rapidly. Research is asked to be more effective, fast, accountable, trans-disciplinary, result-oriented, policy-driven and able to generate benefits for people and firms in the short and middle run. While a strong intensification of science-society relationships is occurring, an increasing number of actors and stakeholders are involved in research production. At the same time, pervasiveness of technology is rendering users an active part in technological development; economic and social interests on science and technology are growing on a global scale; new democratic and ethical issues emerge. Despite the European institutions’ efforts, all those trends and phenomena are occurring in an extremely fragmented way. In this scenario, a fairly balanced and consistent co-evolution between science and society can no longer be taken for granted. This is just the starting point of the following comment section that, through the  Luciano d’Andrea, Sally Wyatt, Erik Aarden, Jos Lejten and Peter Sekloča’s writings, aims to analyse the different aspects and questions around the socialisation of science and technology’s matter.

Scientific communication also pertains to the domain of society, where the formation of public opinion about science and technology is taking place. Concerning this process, two main points are exposed in the commentary. The first is a proposition on how the public as a social category may be conceptualized, and the second is the extent of the participation of members of the public in strengthening socialization and democratization practices in new, highly complex, contexts of scientific research. The public is conceptualized to include all citizens no matter their professional origin, including scientists, which promotes the idea of openness and equality of the public sphere where scientific issues are discussed. To be democratic in its practical-political setting, such a conception needs to deal with the problems of participation in a highly mediatized world, where not every member of the public could be included into scientific research. The author thus reflects on the mechanisms which would enable the formation of public forums where the trust of influential public actors as stakeholders of research can be tested.

In the Handbook on the socialisation of scientific and technological research, edited by Wiebe Bijker and Luciano d’Andrea, ‘socialisation’ is used to both describe and prescribe the ways in which science and technology are used in society. In this comment, ‘socialisation’ is discussed from two other points of view. First, the ways in which science and technology are sometimes used to organize, structure and dominate the social are identified. Second, drawing on Merton’s norms of science, an argument is made against over-socialising science and in favour of acknowledging and preserving the ‘special’ nature of science, for its own sake and because, at its best, science can offer an alternative model for other social activities.