Narratives of transparency: how do commercial and non-commercial providers of research information legitimize the datafication of research?

The datafication of research has immensely expanded the possibilities for creating more metadata regarding research practice and performance. This has supported the growth of research information produced by commercial and non-commercial providers based on digital infrastructures including bibliometric databases, research information systems, and analytics services for the scientific community and beyond. In this paper, we ask how the providers of research information legitimize the need for the datafication of research and thus for their tools by looking at the providers’ narratives of transparency and how they differ according to their business model. Based on 22 expert interviews with employees of commercial and non-commercial organizations, we show that there are three narratives – demonstrating research performance, improving research, and supporting research governance – that build on distinct meanings of transparency, implying particular understandings of research practice and performance, which influence how research is made accessible and assessable through the metadata and analytics services the organizations provide.