• Inclusion

• Feedback Cycles

• Dealing with diversity

Questions concerning the social organisation of science are often addressed by means of the Credit Economy Approach (CEA). This approach models scientific communities on the assumption that scientists pursue “social credit”, and thus are faced by an incentive structure: the “credit economy”. This paper establishes how the CEA must be interpreted. It argues that the best interpretation 1) casts the credit economy as dependent on and reflective of a pre-existing normative consensus; 2) reveals this consensus to be centred on substantive values and relevant for the epistemic functioning of the community; and 3) depends for its understanding of this consensus on psychological social identity theory. The resulting account furthers work situating the credit economy in a wider social context, and provides a framework for further research integrating formal-computational work in the Credit Economy Approach, conceptual work by other philosophers of science, and insights from the social sciences.

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