Demonstrating public value to funders and other stakeholders—the journey of ELIXIR, a virtual and distributed research infrastructure for life science data

Corinne S Martin,Elina Griniece,Ana M P Melo,Xènia Pérez Sitjà,Robert Petryszak,Christine Stansberg,Niklas Blomberg,Hannes Rothe,Andrew Smith,Juan Arenas Márquez,Susanna Repo,Francesca De Leo,Premysl Velek,Katharina B Lauer

doi:10.1111/apce.12328

Abstract

AbstractOpen Science is a founding principle of ELIXIR, a pan‐European research infrastructure for life science data, with 21 Member countries plus the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. The mission of ELIXIR is to coordinate bioinformatics resources so that they form a single, integrated and pan‐European infrastructure, which can be used freely by academic and private‐sector researchers across the globe. As a recipient of public and charitable funding, ELIXIR must demonstrate its value, and the need to produce evidence in support of this is intensifying. Our practice‐led journey towards demonstrating public value is articulated around five main challenges and, for each, we present our pragmatic approach for tackling it. We begin by showing how we are working towards demystifying what research infrastructures do. We then shed light on the sort of evidence our funders and other stakeholders are asking us for, how this evidence varies in nature and scope, and our tactics to satisfy them. We follow‐on by providing our thoughts on possible barriers and solutions to embedding impact evaluation in our activities. Finally, we provide lessons learned, which we believe are sufficiently transferable and will be inspirational to other research infrastructures as they embark on their own journeys to demonstrate public value.

Highlights

Life science research has become data-intensive, as demonstrated by the rise of bioinformatics, or ‘computational biology’
Our practice-led journey towards demonstrating public value is articulated around five main challenges and, for each, we present our pragmatic approach for tackling it, along with worked examples
With the exception of initiated and specialized circles, research infrastructures are often understood as physical constructs, typically expensive and made of cement and steel, for instance telescopes and particle accelerators

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Life science research has become data-intensive, as demonstrated by the rise of bioinformatics, or ‘computational biology’. Bioinformatics can, for instance, provide solutions for pollution control and remediation, and is revolutionizing our biogeographic knowledge of species and habitats, having already provided hope for the development of new antibiotics in the face of rising bacterial resistance For these “big data” applications to happen, it is essential that data and related resources such as tools, cloud computing, training, and standards, are kept as openly accessible and free as possible. In this context, 2020 saw the drafting of a future UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (UNESCO, 2020), which acknowledges a movement that had emerged from the scientific community and spread across sectors, including the private sector, the policy sphere and citizens. We believe that the lessons learned we conclude with are sufficiently transferable and will be inspirational to other research infrastructures as they embark on their own journeys to demonstrate public value

Identifying ELIXIR’s main impact areas and the journey’s “challenges”

Capturing relationship capital using post-event perception surveys

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

LESSONS LEARNED ALONG THE WAY