Scientific and scholarly practice and its documentation as transmission

Science and scholarship is communicated through a large number of more and less established practices and genres. Besides explicit communication and informing, it takes place also through doing science and scholarship in practice. It is often referred to through metaphors like craft and appreticeship but it becomes particularly visible when the chain of practice it is either voluntarily or of necessity broken in attempts to document, describe, inscribe or explain it. The presentation draws from empirical work conducted in the CApturing Paradata for documenTing data creation and Use for the REsearch of the future (CAPTURE) project to discuss how scientific and scholarly practice and different means to document it function as modes of transmission of science, scholarschip, and scientific and scholarly knowledge. The presentation contrasts practices themselves and various “things that can be appropriated as informative of processes and practices” termed paradata, and how they provide different opportunities and obstacles to conveying and passing on practices and practice knowledge. The both including diverse forms of paradata have limitations and complementarities, and the perhaps most significant conundrum is how to link them to each other.