Interview with Mark Wieczorek

We interviewed Mark Wieczorek, one of the key figures in planetary science and open science. Here are his answers to the interview’s questions below:

1- Introducing yourself briefly

I am originally from the United States. I studied geophysics at Washington University in St. Louis, completed a postdoctoral position with Maria Zuber at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and later moved to France, where I joined CNRS in 2003. Scientifically, I consider myself a planetary geophysicist. My research focuses on planetary gravity fields, topography, magnetic fields, impact cratering, and planetary interiors. Much of my work relies on spacecraft data. I have been involved in major missions such as GRAIL, which mapped the Moon's gravity field and InSight, Psyche, as well as the ongoing missions BepiColombo, JUICE and Psyche.

2- The first time you considered using/creating alternatives to USA and/or big corporation services, your reasons.

Outside planetary science, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the direction in which large technology companies are headed. Over roughly a decade, I watched software become more commercialized, more invasive, and often less useful. Indeed, companies collected enormous amounts of personal data while adding features users never requested. This gradually pushed me toward open-source alternatives.

For me, open-source software offers several advantages. It respects privacy, gives users control over their own data, and allows bugs or problems to be addressed transparently. Even if I cannot fix a problem myself, I can report it and often see the issue resolved. I see this as fundamentally different from the closed ecosystems of large corporations.

I emphasize that moving away from proprietary platforms is a gradual process. Nobody should expect to replace everything overnight. The practical approach is to replace one tool at a time—for example, moving from Gmail to a privacy-focused email provider, or from Microsoft Word to LibreOffice. Over time, these changes accumulate. Furthermore, after making sure the app/service transition took place, it is quite comfortable to change even the operating system to Linux from Windows or MacOS.

3- Your (and your communities') experiences with 

a. Twitter vs. Mastodon

Regarding social media, I strongly believe researchers should leave X (formerly Twitter). I see it as increasingly dominated by polarization and low-quality discourse. I regard both Mastodon and Bluesky as viable alternatives, but I prefer Mastodon.

My preference for Mastodon comes from several factors. It is fully open source, operates within the broader Fediverse ecosystem, provides a less hostile environment, encourages more thoughtful discussion, and avoids algorithmic content manipulation. While it currently has fewer users than Bluesky, I find the quality of interaction substantially better.

b. slack vs. mattermost

For team communication, I advocate replacing Slack with Mattermost. My interest in Mattermost grew after Slack restricted access to message history and increasingly pushed commercial features. Mattermost provides essentially the same functionality while remaining under user control. I also expect platforms like Discord to eventually face the same commercial pressures that affected Slack. Worse still, I am particularly critical of Microsoft Teams. In my experience, it is cumbersome, slow, and often adopted because institutions purchase large Microsoft bundles rather than because it is the best technical solution.

c. Peertube 

One project I am especially proud of is PeerTube. I see it as a genuine alternative to YouTube. Through our planetary-science-focused server, SolarSystem.video, we provide a curated collection of scientific talks and educational material. Unlike YouTube, where scientific content is often buried beneath sensationalized, AI-generated, or conspiratorial material, our platform is designed specifically to help people find serious planetary science content efficiently without unrequested advertisements.

d. Signatories

In my view, researchers frequently need an open signatory service to gather support for:

Existing solutions are usually commercial, track users, hard to check the authenticity, or are not designed for academic communities. Signatories was created as an open-source alternative that allows scientific communities to organize and sign public statements while retaining control of the platform and data. The broader idea is that infrastructure for scientific governance should belong to scientists themselves, not to private companies. Researchers sign petitions both anonymously or directly with their unique ORCID so that everyone can be sure the signatories are real people.

e. Liberaforms

Similarly, for Signatories, Scientists constantly need:

Instead of relying on proprietary services such as Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, the Cooperative hosts its own LiberaForms server.

The emphasis is on privacy, data ownership, open-source software, and community control. It is even more powerful than Google Forms with more, beneficial features ensuring end-to-end encryption, ownership transfer, and much better usability.    

f. Indico

Scientific communities need much more than journals. We organize workshops, conferences, seminar series, and community meetings all the time. Most people simply use whatever commercial platform is available, but I wanted infrastructure that the community actually controls. That's why we adopted Indico. It is mature, open-source conference-management software already used by many research institutions. Through SolarSystem.events, we can manage registrations, abstracts, schedules, and meetings without depending on commercial providers. For me, this is part of a larger philosophy: scientific communication infrastructure should belong to scientists.

4- Summary on how the Planetary Research journal and Planetary Research Cooperation were founded.

Planetary Research is probably the project that best represents what I think scientific publishing should become. I became increasingly frustrated with a system where publicly funded research is often locked behind paywalls, while authors are also asked to pay large publication charges. The economics simply do not make sense to me.

With Planetary Research, we wanted to build a genuine diamond open-access journal. Readers pay nothing. Authors pay nothing. The journal is run by the community rather than by a commercial publisher. At the same time, I do not believe open access should mean lower standards. The goal is to maintain rigorous peer review and high editorial quality while removing unnecessary financial barriers.

More broadly, I see the journal as an experiment in whether a scientific community can reclaim ownership of scholarly publishing and operate it for the benefit of researchers rather than shareholders.

The Cooperative emerged because I gradually realized that publishing is only one piece of the problem. Scientists communicate, collaborate, organize meetings, share videos, discuss results, recruit collaborators, and publish papers. Most of those activities are currently dependent on large corporations.

My view is that scientists should own the infrastructure that supports science. The Cooperative is an attempt to build that infrastructure. The journal, the Mastodon server, PeerTube, Mattermost, Indico, LiberaForms, Signatories, blogs, and other services are not separate projects in my mind. They are parts of a single ecosystem.

I am not arguing that everyone must abandon commercial platforms tomorrow. What I am arguing is that scientific communities should have independent alternatives that they govern themselves.

If we can communicate, organize, publish, and collaborate on infrastructure that is open, transparent, and community-owned, then science becomes more resilient and less dependent on decisions made by companies whose priorities may not align with the interests of researchers.

Ultimately, the Cooperative is my attempt to demonstrate that a different model is possible: one where the scientific community builds and maintains its own digital commons.

5- Is there anything you would like to say to the astrophysics/planetary scientists and candidates?

As I have already mentioned in this interview, please use the tools we develop! They are free, no money will be charged, and in case permission or an account is required, such as with our Indico or mattermost servers, it usually doesn’t take more than 5 minutes of our time to set up.