The Sequence and the Standard: An Account of Participatory Informational Format Exclusion (PIFE)

This paper explores how data formats shape the possibilities for participation in Open Research Data (ORD) infrastructures. In doing so, this paper introduces the concept of Participatory Informational Format Exclusion (PIFE) to capture the exclusion of epistemic agents from contributing to global scientific systems due to the misalignment of their data formats with infrastructural norms. Drawing on a single ethnographic episode, I show that format exclusion is not a technical problem but a structural misalignment between ORD infrastructure’s embedded conception of what data are and the epistemic tradition within which the agent works. The paper develops PIFE through four analytical properties and considers its implications for debates about openness and inequity in ORD infrastructure’s.