Making a Research Infrastructure: Conditions and Strategies to Transform a Service into an Infrastructure

Nataliia Sokolovska,Rebecca Kahn,Benedikt Fecher,Teresa Völker,Philip Nebe

doi:10.1093/scipol/scab026

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, we examine the making of research infrastructures for digital research. In line with many scholars in this field, we understand research infrastructures as deeply relational and adaptive systems that are embedded in research practice. Our aim was to identify the relevant context factors, actor constellations, organizational settings, and strategies which contribute to the evolution of a basic service into an actual infrastructure. To this end, we conducted thirty-three case studies of non-commercial and commercial research services along the research life cycle. By examining how these services emerge, we hope to gain a better understanding of the conditions and strategies to transform a service into an infrastructure. We are able to identify competitive disadvantages for publicly financed infrastructure projects with regard to the mode of implementation and the resources invested in development and marketing. We suggest that the results of this study are of practical relevance, especially for individuals, communities, and organizations wanting to create research infrastructures, as well as for funders and policy makers wanting to support innovative and sustainable infrastructures.

Highlights

Over the last few decades, “infrastructure studies” have emerged in the humanities and the social sciences, as scholars have begun to question and investigate the systems which connect, control, support, constrain and transform our work, leisure, learning and interactions
Research services only become what most infrastructure scholars consider an actual infrastructure if they succeed in penetrating scholarly practice and structured social relations
We investigate the making of research infrastructures

Summary

Introduction

Over the last few decades, “infrastructure studies” have emerged in the humanities and the social sciences, as scholars have begun to question and investigate the systems which connect, control, support, constrain and transform our work, leisure, learning and interactions. Research services only become what most infrastructure scholars consider an actual infrastructure if they succeed in penetrating scholarly practice and structured social relations In these instances we might witness the process in which emerging research infrastructure generates effects which loop back upon the social organization of science. Inversion allows the observer to see the depth of the dependencies and interdependencies that make up the infrastructure, as well as making the influence of external forces, such as politics and knowledge production, visible (ibid) It is this moment that we have tried to pinpoint, and interrogate, in this study, as, for many existing research infrastructures, the move into the digital realm is a significant, and irrevocable moment of inversion. Research infrastructures are part of the social practice of scientific work and responsive to the environment (e.g., legal, political and cultural developments) This influences the internal functioning of infrastructures, i.e. how infrastructures are set up in order to remain adaptable. This approach tends to see the productive practice as generative, and asserts that it is iterative practice that shapes technology

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