Challenges in Building Innovative, Sustainable and Open Research Infrastructures · Elephant in the Lab

Introduction

The way science is conducted is changing. The internet and other digital means alter the scale and pace of data-driven research and collaborative possibilities. Most modern scholarly research now relies to some extent on digital research infrastructures. Recognition of this has led to large-scale, public-funded initiatives to develop digital infrastructures for research at the institutional, national and international levels. Research funding focuses in particular on Open Science and thus on access to scientific products and the transparency of the research process. Despite the focus on infrastructure development, however, publicly funded infrastructure projects often find it difficult to prevail in the long term. Innovative, user-friendly and open research infrastructures remain urgently needed to make scientific knowledge available on a long-term and sustainable basis.

In this post, we present the results of a stakeholder-focused workshop at the Open Science Fair 2019 in Porto (September 16-18). The Open Science Fair is one of the leading conferences for public research infrastructure projects in Europe and is funded by the European Commission. The 2019 event was organized by the EC projects OpenAIRE, FIT4RRI, the EOSC Secretariat and FAIRsFAIR. Hence, many attendees are working directly or indirectly on the creation of research infrastructures for the 21st century and know the problems and opportunities first-hand. In the interactive workshop, we garnered the views of more than 50 expert participants on the current barriers to developing innovative and sustainable research infrastructures. Key areas for discussion were how resources are allocated and managed, how people are motivated and teams are organized. In synthesising these results, we here identify key problem blocks and preliminary solutions (with commentary on their feasibility) as proposed by participants.