Slides from "Macro-Level Issues Facing the Research Infrastructure" section of the "Management Challenges in Research Infrastructures" module from the PARTHENOS Training Suite, https://training.parthenos-project.eu

1. PARTHENOS-project.eu
Macro-level Issues
ESU Leipzig, 2016
Dr Jennifer Edmond
Trinity College Dublin

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What does it all mean?
Facility
Services
Tools
“A view that is experiment based … laboratory-based” – Franco Niccolucci

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What does it all mean?
Knowledge
Services/Tools (Data
Layer, EU specific focus
for Humanities Ris?)
Services/Tools
(Software Layer)
People
Infrastructure
(Facility)

4. PARTHENOS-project.eu
What does it all mean?
Train
Share
Mentor
Curate
Prepare
Federate
Provide
Adapt
Create
Mentor
Introduce
Inspire
Scale,Reuse,
Hybridity,
Durability

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What does it all mean?
Developers
Cultural Heritage
End Users
User
Contributor
Creator

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What does it all mean?
Developers
Cultural Heritage
End Users
User:
- How do I get past the ‘chicken and
egg’ problem
- What is an RI?
- How can I access RIs and their
services?
- How can the help me do my work
more efficiently?
- What can I learn from and through
them?

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What does it all mean?
Developers
Cultural Heritage
End Users
Contributor:
- How can I reuse and build
sustainably?
- How can I incorporate users, data,
audiences more effectively into my
work?
- How can I connect with a
community that may have similar
goals and useful knowledge?

8. PARTHENOS-project.eu
What does it all mean?
Developers
Cultural Heritage
End Users
Creator:
- How can I provide a support layer at
scale?
- How can I deepen my understanding of
my users, stakeholders and audiences?
- What is the balance I need of tools/
services, knowledge/people, data and
networks?
- How can reuse the work of others and
ensure sustainability and
interoperability of my own work?
- Where can I find peers and information
- How can I shape the policy
environment around me?

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Concerns about Infrastructure
Infrastructure consolidates access to funding (=power), therefore
exacerbates known sources of friction in DH
creates perverse incentives (S. Anderson, IJHAC 2013)
can be seen as a site for exacerbated gender inequality
(Nowiskie/Posner),
post-colonial divides (McPherson),
and labour relations (McCarty, infrastructure as Europe’s #alt-Ac?)
Infrastructure is seen as an intermediary in the developing European Open
Science policy initiative, but
 we can’t mandate what institutions value
 we can’t mandate what CHIs will allow us to share
 we can’t always serve researchers and citizens on a limited budget…

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A Word on Careers
The North American ‘#alt-ac’ movement has had no real EU equivalent
There is, however, a more ‘top down’ equivalent in the support for research
careers in infrastructures
Infrastructure definitions rely on people and their knowledge
Both the the Digital Agenda and the Open Science Cloud call for huge
investments in human capital
Are projects like RITrain and Edison the answers, however?
How can we make infrastructure work different and rewarding in its own
right, not as a second class alternative (see reports of LERU et al)?
Knorr Cetina’s ‘object’ versus ‘social’ orientations
Epistemic agency
Psychological contracts versus Public Service contracts

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HRB (Ireland) Career Path

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Open Science and the Open Science Policy Platform
The five lines of potential policy actions are:
1. Fostering and creating incentives for Open Science, by including open science in higher
education programmes, identifying good examples and best practices, and extending the input of
knowledge producers in a more open science environment (including citizen science). It is also about
guaranteeing the quality, impact and research integrity of (open) science;
2. Removing barriers for Open Science, which implies among other a review of researchers'
careers with a view on creating incentives and awarding researchers for engagement with Open
Science; address legal constraints and uncertainties;
3. Mainstreaming and further promoting open access policies to research data and publications
and wherever possible to proceed to open scholarly commons ranging from open scientific discovery
and analysis to open research assessment, outreach and publication;
4. Developing research infrastructures for Open Science, to improve data storage, access and
governance, develop a common framework for research data including a European Open Science
Cloud; and,
5. Embedding Open Science in society as a socio-economic driver, whereby Open Science
becomes instrumental in making science more responsive to societal and economic expectations,
notably by motivating knowledge coalitions of stakeholders to address the grand societal challenges.

13. PARTHENOS-project.eu
Open Science and the Open Science Policy Platform
To make things more concrete, there are eight policy ambitions that need to be
addressed in line with these five broad action lines:
1. FAIR open data
2. European Open Science Cloud
3. altmetrics
4. new business models for scholarly communication
5. rewards
6. research integrity
7. open science skills
8. Citizen Science

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The European Open Science Cloud

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But hope as well?
Can RIs contribute to the democratisation of digital methods, rather than
become new structures for exclusion?
Can RIs support debate as well as development?
Can RIs become a place where the European #alt ac can consolidate a
voice and build the career opportunities that are otherwise lacking?
Can we use the reach and breadth of research infrastructure to advocate
for our disciplines, our methods, and for the interests of our longstanding
partners, the CHIs?
Can RIs give humanists not just access to tools, services and knowledge
but a unified voice?

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Question Time…
www.parthenos-project.eu
Jennifer Edmond
Trinity College Dublin
edmondj@tcd.ie www.tcd.ie