Infrastructure is a word used a lot in the scholarly community, and for good reason. But what it actually means, how it works and how it affects research communications isn’t always clear, even to those of us that work with it every day. In fact, there really is no it to infrastructure–no single organization, technology or approach keeps things running. And sometimes it’s difficult to know what those things are. What is infrastructure and what’s just…technology? What does it enable?
Over the course of 2020, we explored these topics, including preservation, search, and the distribution of information on this blog, with an edited series of postings and interviews designed to shed light on what infrastructure is and what it means for these functions and systems to be dependent on each other, and us. It’s not a series for technology experts, it’s a series for everyone with a stake in how scholarly information is collected, distributed and used.
Infrastructure Series: List of Blog Posts
- February 2020: Digital Preservation. We start off our series in February with the topic of digital preservation and an interview with Craig Van Dyck, Executive Director of CLOCKSS.
- March 2020: Metadata. This second entry is an interview with Laura Paglione from Metadata 2020 on topic of metadata in scholarly communications .
- April 2020: Data Citations. This interview with Rachael Lammey and Helena Cousijn illustrates the importance of cross-community collaboration in addressing data citations .
- May 2020: Publishing Technology. This interview with James MacGregor and Mike Nason of PKP/OJS illustrates how metadata and technology issues intersect in publishing infrastructure.
- June 2020: Libraries. This month’s interview with Jill Claassen and Reggie Raju of the University of Cape Town discusses libraries, publishing and social justice .
- September 2020: Standards. This month’s interview with Bill Kasdorf explains how the W3C develops standards through the efforts of community volunteers .
- October 2020: Open Access Books. This month’s interview with Lucy Barnes and the COPIM team regarding the infrastructures that support open access scholarly monographs
- November 2020: Funding Research Infrastructure. This month’s interview with Kay Thaney from Invest in Open Infrastructure examines funding and sustainability models for infrastructure.
- December 2020: Mapping Scholarly Communications Infrastructure. This month’s interview with Mike Roy, David Lewis, and Katherine Skinner on how infrastructure work is both interconnected and interdependent.
In a concluding post, Jennifer Kemp looks back at the Infrastucture Series with collected resources recommended by participants and ahead to continuing the conversation.
Let us know
Our series was administered through a FORCE11 working group and led by series editor, Jennifer Kemp. We look forward to sharing insights and getting your feedback on the series and topics it covers. If you have a particular topic or question you’d like to see covered here, let us know.
