Flexibility Relative to What? Change to Research Infrastructure

Abstract

It is often said that, in the face of an ever-changing world, infrastructure must remain flexible. Yet, what is meant by change remains glib and, consequently, so too do our studies on flexibility. In this paper, we develop three sensitizing concepts to investigate change to research infrastructure: 1) technoscientific: changes in research objects, scientific methods, and instruments; 2) sociotechnical: changes in social organization, coordination and, collaboration tools; and data sharing techniques; and 3) institutional: changes in funding and regulatory regimes. The majority of studies of "information infrastructure" have focused on the sociotechnical facet, and so we offer the two additional facets of change to help sensitize researchers to empirical instances of these encountered in the field, and to broaden the research agenda. To elaborate these concepts, we focus on a long-term research infrastructure that has been investigating HIV disease for nearly thirty years: The Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS). Over time, the MACS has faced tremendous changes in its science, collaboration and communication tools, its data and specimen repositories, its institutional environment, and the disease itself. Before we can begin to characterize flexibility, we must understand the nature of change research infrastructures face. We conclude by outlining a research agenda that will match forms of flexibility to the heterogeneity of changes an infrastructure may encounter.

Organizational Resilience in Data Archives: Three Case Studies in Social Science Data Archives

“…Sustainability is not a state of grace which one might indefinitely enjoy once having met all the criteria. Rather, everybody has some problems all of the time, and new problems constantly emerge that require adjustments to how an organization operates (Ribes & Polk, 2014;Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). Each of our 'long lived' data archives continually adjusted to changing conditions, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not.…”

“…Second, organizations are not uniformly sustainable (or unsustainable), but have may have some elements that are more sustainable and some that are less so at any given moment in time (Ribes & Polk 2014). The Sustainability Index suggests this by pointing to ten different dimensions on which digital projects may have more or less sustainable practices (funding, business planning, business operations, business development, financial management, technical legal and policy skills, governance systems, and organizational structure and interdependencies) (Knowledge Exchange 2014).…”

Uncertainty about the Long-Term: Digital Libraries, Astronomy Data, and Open Source Software

“…The first two sources are already known as posing significant challenges to developers of research infrastructure [8]. However, LSST also faces uncertainty about the future availability of instruments external to the project.…”

“…Studies of infrastructures for scientific research reveal infrastructure success is affected by the ability to anticipate and adapt to change [8]: 1) during development, when decisions are made in the face of uncertainty about future user requirements; and 2) during operations, when infrastructures may have to adapt to rapid changes in user requirements.…”

Assessing and tracing the outcomes and impact of research infrastructures

“…Infrastructures change over time: Data collections grow and change scope, software tools come and go, and facilities modify their services and operating procedures. Indeed, designing for flexibility and change is one of the main approaches to sustainable infrastructure development, though such flexibility may need to respond to a variety of factors (Ribes & Polk, 2014). The use of citation metrics in studies of specific infrastructures tend to gloss over temporal factors.…”