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The importance of investment in open research infrastructure-NISO Plus
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The importance of investment in open research infrastructure-NISO Plus
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SHELLY NUTTAL: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the session, the importance of investment in open research infrastructure. I'm really excited to introduce you to our three speakers. I think you'll really enjoy how they frame this challenge, and highlighting the fact that we do have a recent UNESCO recommendations for open science that really leans in on infrastructure, research infrastructure, open science infrastructure. And there are still many challenges.
SHELLY NUTTAL: So our first speaker is Kaitlin Thaney. She's the executive director of invest in open infrastructure. Then Ana Heredia, who's an independent consultant, but I think we all know her so well and works with many of us, including here on the work that I do. Carly Robinson from the Department of Energy she's the assistant director for information products and services.
SHELLY NUTTAL: So Caitlin, please go ahead and bring up your slides, m you are welcome to start anytime.
KAITLIN THANEY: Thank you, Shelly. Let me get this thing on. Here we go. It's a pleasure to be with you all virtually for this. As Shelly had mentioned, my name is Kaitlin Thaney. I'm the executive director of Invest in Open Infrastructure. We're also known as IOI. And I'll be talking a little bit about our work and the framing for our work, and how we approach this broader question about how we can increase not only the adoption of open infrastructure, but also investment and sustainability of that.
KAITLIN THANEY: So starting on a high level of infrastructure is really having a moment. This has been a word that I wouldn't have ever thought of would be so much implanted in various sorts of conversations. Philanthropies have pivoted entire funding portfolios, like the Siegel Family Endowment towards infrastructure. We've seen infrastructure raised as a banner for equity, and also for change. Infrastructure institutes that have sprung up at academic institutions in various ways and forms.
KAITLIN THANEY: Funding programs and even industry plays, such as the group from OpenStack starting an open infrastructure foundation to help galvanize a conversation about how to better invest in various forms of infrastructure in this sort of capacity. But one question that comes up, especially given the remit for our work focusing on research and scholarship is-- are we all talking about the same thing?
KAITLIN THANEY: There are so many different dimensions whether you're talking about the infrastructure agenda in various political contexts around the world. If you're talking about that within institutions, you're talking about that in terms of technology. So when we talk about digital infrastructure, does that align with open? What are some of the differences there and bits of nuance? When we say public, do we mean for all, to what extent?
KAITLIN THANEY: When we say infrastructure, does that include all software and tools, or are we speaking about certain dimensions of that, that are important to prop up and to understand in the broader context. What about the social dimension of not only labor, but also the social infrastructure that helps bring together areas, especially when we talk about research and scholarship.
KAITLIN THANEY: And also, who gets to decide, what does count and what may not. So just for definition purposes, when we speak about infrastructure-- on a broad level. we look at the systems, protocols, software that research and scholarship rely on. The reliance relationship is really important in terms of the sort of way in which you think of roads and bridges, that if they were to be removed, there'd be a disruptive effect in the broader space.
KAITLIN THANEY: And so thinking of that in the technological aspect as well. But some additional dimensions kind of flavor when we think of open infrastructure, and these are just a few of the core attributes and ways in which we think about this that are continuously evolving. But embedded in that are also this idea that openness is ingrained at the operational and design level, that the solutions are open source.
KAITLIN THANEY: Content and data is open licensed. Transparent pricing, governance, some of these elements that there's been a significant amount of work to start to unpack some of these values alignment elements, and what that means in practice. Also thinking of open infrastructure as an enabler for communities to deliver collective benefit that should be maximally accessible. It should help enable and further equitable participation in the purest sense.
KAITLIN THANEY: And in terms of having adoption and usage with minimal, if not zero restrictions. And then also facilitating the creation and dissemination of open knowledge. That for our focus we're looking at contributing to the production, dissemination, creation, and sharing of information in the sort of [INAUDIBLE].. So as for why we're focusing on this. Invest in Open Infrastructure was established to really think about not only the financial and sustainability challenges, but also really to dig into areas that we need to focus more attention to.
KAITLIN THANEY: And this was best characterized to me by someone in the sector as, the ecosystem is sick. The current system for scholarly research and knowledge production it's geared towards commoditization, and even increasingly, commoditization of open access. Something that's supposed to be this big enabler, participation, and affordability, and knowledge sharing creation. And it's cost prohibitive.
KAITLIN THANEY: It's skewed towards profit generation in many ways of higher education operating as a business whereas and away from some of the other broader missions and aims. As well as commercial players, and it privileges the well-resourced. In our view this devalues and under served the broader community and it perpetuates a system that favors prestige, exclusion, and walled gardens.
KAITLIN THANEY: I like to think of this quote from Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine. And very well known for her concept of disaster capitalism. And I think we've seen this, especially over the last two years of the pandemic-- that this crisis like earlier ones could well be the catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interest in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities.
KAITLIN THANEY: We're going to go through just a few quick examples of when I talk about the ecosystem being sick, and why I view this as such a need, and the urgency and a catalyst for change. As many of you know and have been involved in broader discourse about, we recently saw, and especially back in December where it was approved, after being stalled by the Federal Trade Commission for a number of months-- Clarivate buying ProQuest for $5.3 billion.
KAITLIN THANEY: When we talk about resource scarcity and scarcity of funding in terms of the limitations of what's keeping infrastructure from being supported, we're also looking at $5.3 billion being invested in broader consolidation in the broader sector. This was framed also as a means of building an end-to-end pipeline of data from kindergarten through postgraduate.
KAITLIN THANEY: And thinking of the growing library market and the commoditization of that significant cross-selling opportunities. And again, thinking of all of the various components there where competition is affected, and also pricing for those that are at institutions that are now looking at fewer groups that are responsible for many of the products they rely on. This is an image of looking at the broader Elsevier landscape of the various tools and services that are under their portfolio and umbrella.
KAITLIN THANEY: We're also looking at this across a number of key players, so we're seeing this concentrated in a number of, or in an ever decreasing amount of groups in terms of influence. When we think about, not only the core services that are provided in terms of, they providing top prestige scholarly journals, but also then selling the data back to us that is used for promotion and tenure in institutions and job security, as well as owning other pieces of the tool landscape that are having data be used as a means of also feeding into this.
KAITLIN THANEY: This becomes increasingly ripe for conflict of interest, and also for additional kind of concentration again of that control. Privacy and security is also something we've seen, especially with this shift over the past two years to more of an online learning environment, online research environment, and work from home. That privacy has been getting shortchanged in many different ways, whether you're talking about Canvas, Proctorio, a number of other sort of services-- how those may affect some of those core rights that I know in the Library Bill of Rights that it articulates protecting that privacy for students and for users, and for researchers.
KAITLIN THANEY: And what is the responsibility there to ensure that we are not infringing on an ethical purpose on these sorts of rights. Also thinking of the broader relationships with the services that we are engaging in. And also paying significant amounts for access to, and engagement in as to where they are also doing business, and where they're getting their information. Sarah Lamdan who's a professor at CUNY Law here in New York, also on IOI's Community Oversight Council has written about this extensively, and has a book that'll be coming out this year about these corporations are no longer publishers that librarians are used to dealing with.
KAITLIN THANEY: The kind that focus on particular data types. Instead the companies are data barons, sweeping up broad swaths of data to repackage and sell. This is seen as normal practice in the broader ecosystem, and why we think that an investment in open in a structure that is community owned and community governed, and abides by more of the values that are touted by institutions is necessary. We need open infrastructure is an equalizer and as an enabler.
KAITLIN THANEY: Infrastructure is not neutral. Your technology choices are not neutral. Participation in open knowledge is not a passive or an apolitical act. I believe that we need to reassess our baseline assumptions that all tech platforms are inherently good and designed to increase freedoms and opportunity. And look at these questions more critically, and with an eye for more information to be assessed in terms of broader conversation and evaluation.
KAITLIN THANEY: So for IOI, we approach this in a few different ways. We conduct research, we strongly believe in evidence-based, not only giving, but also action. And we craft resources to help others assess, build, and make investment decisions about open infrastructure. And then we also work on putting those into action in terms of piloting solutions, soliciting community conversations and feedback, coordinating stakeholders in various ways to help further a shared agenda in this work.
KAITLIN THANEY: Over the course of the last year and a half, we've engaged with hundreds of researchers, practitioners, funders industry leaders, et cetera to start to better understand about how these decisions are being made. To then start to think about how that might be matched with the resourcing and investment-- not only within institutions, consortia, and scholarly societies, but also through the broader funding landscape at large.
KAITLIN THANEY: Some of the issues that have been flagged to us in terms of points of friction and tension are when it comes to time, what time can be invested in doing the due diligence and making some of these decisions versus what's available. And balancing the immediacy of some of the bigger challenges that have faced institutions in places of higher learning, especially over the past two years. Prioritization.
KAITLIN THANEY: Near term gain in terms of investing in some of these open tools versus long term investment. Also whose values get applied? There's broad sort of understanding that there are certain elements that are in line with the mission of an institution. But again, when it comes down to the efficiency, and also staffing and resourcing questions-- some of those can become deprioritized from the information we've gleaned from institutional leaders.
KAITLIN THANEY: Resourcing trade-offs and also this perceived resource scarcity and the effects on that. About where services might not feel like they can compete with other more well-resourced commercial offerings based on financial and business models that have been in place to help allow for broader scale and community engagement. And so in terms of some of the work that we've been building out at IOI.
KAITLIN THANEY: We recently launched a prototype called the Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services that looks to help address some of these information asymmetries. The same sort of way that you look at various sources of information. If you were to buy a stock or make a bigger investment, why shouldn't we have a broader baseline of information available so that we can have an elevated discussion about some of these tools and services.
KAITLIN THANEY: The aims of this is also to help foster a greater understanding of open infrastructure services, how they operate, cultivate a deeper awareness of how those services are provided. And prototype a means of standardizing-- making those key pieces of information available. Also this was done in consultation, not only with the project leads that are part of the initial prototype launch, but also with institutional leaders and funders conducted and gathered feedback through a series of focus groups to understand their decision making processes and what their core needs are as well.
KAITLIN THANEY: A sneak peek of this, and you can make these slides available, so you can go and you can poke through the catalog. We really looked at a couple of different ways in which we could start looking and making some of these decisions. So from a transformative influence, you can see here-- does it have an open code repository. What is the governance structure and process.
KAITLIN THANEY: Is that publicly available. Are there transparent pricing and cost expectations, and what does a rating among these core attributes look like. As well as when we look at broader data collection, we powered this also with looking at some of the financial information pulled from provider and funder websites, annual reports, if they're registered in the United States is a non-profit.
KAITLIN THANEY: Looking at information they filed with the US Internal Revenue service through a Form 990, surveys and interviews that we conducted with the service providers. And also on the right here, and this is included on our catalog page-- we also made sure that for every attribute we have represented, the data source is explicitly linked and we also are clear about what counts as evidence. So you can see some of the different attributes here.
KAITLIN THANEY: We talk about reliable technologies, trustworthy organizations, and equitable and inclusive services. We talk about governance structure and processes. What we're looking for there. And so trying to again, learn in the open as we start to build off of this, but also help ensure that we're keeping a baseline and better track record in accessibility of this information for others looking for it.
KAITLIN THANEY: We also, on the financial side, have done some analysis here. Basing on some of these bigger questions, and this is where the future elements of our work would go, about what key information did decision makers look for in guiding investment. What's missing. What has been surfaced in this work that may not be obvious to the broader community. So thinking of, for example, potential risks.
KAITLIN THANEY: If there is a dominance of sort of funding versus another. What does it look like to, in terms of earned revenue and sustainability versus reliance on grants. That can vary in terms of context for various organizations. It's not always as straightforward as just looking at the numbers. What trends and observations do we notice when we start to look at this information across a number of different tools and services.
KAITLIN THANEY: Have they been reported before? Why or why not. We're also looking at governance and also board representation and other elements here too. Thinking also about who we're designing those for. Piece of the work that we're further digging into right now, is that when we speak about the value of shared infrastructure, the "for whom" question becomes especially pertinent. Because that often favors the well-resourced and Western institutions and scholars.
KAITLIN THANEY: And so thinking about-- we talk about the various barriers to participation. The needs that we are prioritizing and investing in infrastructure, and making a case for various support for tools and services, what voices are missing from that discussion? And how can we get to them as well. In summary, in terms of what we're building towards-- thinking about how we can increase the efficiency, accountability, and negotiating power through trusted networks of members in the community.
KAITLIN THANEY: Also thinking of how we can empower institutional leaders, funders, et cetera to make better, and wiser, more efficient funding decisions to help build out a shared collective infrastructure. Also thinking about how we can align power influence, and budgets towards shared needs. And direct funding effectively in measurable ways and really have that anchored in evidence and also in transparent processes.
KAITLIN THANEY: And increase the amount of funding and diversity of those investing in open infrastructure to ensure that we're building a healthy, resilient, and sustainable future for research and scholarship. I'll close by saying that it's easier to say what's not enough than to identify what's needed to fix the system. We are digging into laying out this process and communicating that openly as we go.
KAITLIN THANEY: And we encourage you to follow along, but just to close, we believe open research and access to knowledge requires open infrastructure. And that the way in which we talk about equitable and accessible participation and knowledge production we need to similarly design our core systems and anchor those in community values and governance. And not see those as deterrents or things that slow down the process.
KAITLIN THANEY: That means shifting our reliance in a radical way from players that are misaligned with core values of the community, transparency, and collective responsibility. We'll make these available. There's a number of other links here if you want to learn more about our work. And my thanks for everybody here, and also to the panelists. Back to you, Shelly.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Kaitlin, that was absolutely fantastic. I'm so excited to learn about all of that work. Ana, please go ahead and bring up your slides. And please--
ANA HEREDIA: This was great Kaitlin. Thank you. So Hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you for the NISO team and also my co-panelists and Shelly for shepherding this session. So today, I'd like to share with you some experiences from Latin America, and give you some food for thoughts on why it is important to invest in open digital research infrastructure.
ANA HEREDIA: So I focused on digital infrastructure, as you could see from what Kaitlin just said. It's not only my field of expertise, but it's also because digital research infrastructure is at the core of current discussions around inclusion, equity, and diversity in the research information ecosystem. And at the core of the open science agenda recommendations and best practices.
ANA HEREDIA: So Latin America is a very interesting case of a region where both scientific research and communication of its results are activities mainly financed with public funds. Meaning that the state participation is key for research activities in all countries of the region. So scholarly journals are published within universities, and this is the region in the world with the greatest adoption of open access to scientific journals.
ANA HEREDIA: And I highlight are these common led regional initiatives that I'll share with you today, which are coupled with national and institutional open access journal portals and collaborative, non-commercial initiatives. So I'd like to start with this document, which final version was recently published. So these are the recommendations-- UNESCO recommendations on open science to be adopted by all the member states last year proposed it.
ANA HEREDIA: So let's see how it goes. Let's see how it goes. UNESCO recommendations work as an international standard setting and a legal document, a legal instrument. And it was developed through a regional balanced and multi-stakeholder inclusive and transparent consultation process. So this document says that one of the most urgent action needed areas of the long term investment in digital infrastructure is digital infrastructure.
ANA HEREDIA: And it also recognized the CRIS systems, or the RIM system. Current research information systems as one of these elementary infrastructures for the development of open science. UNESCO also makes it very clear that this digital infrastructure should be governed by the community, by the scientific community. And financed and sustained by governments under the observance of the needs of the societies in which they are.
ANA HEREDIA: So the fundamental concern addressed by UNESCO reports-- the UNESCO report is focused on international inequalities in terms of digital infrastructure, financial or language barriers. And that changes in the research practices and scholarly evaluation systems need to be supported by infrastructures that are aligned to the definitions of knowledge as a public and common good.
ANA HEREDIA: So in a recent article from Cousins and Colleagues, open research infrastructure was defined as the core elements that enable the creation of tools and services used by researchers. These tools and services are layers built on top of this foundational infrastructure. So this paper also highlighted that organizations enabling open research infrastructures must endorse the fundamental principles of equity value, trust, interoperability, sustainability, and community governance.
ANA HEREDIA: In this frame, this foundational infrastructure refers according to Bilder and Colleagues at SIMA-- storage, identifiers, metadata, and assertions. This is to give a little bit of the grounds of the experience that I would like to share with you. Starting with a little overview of the Latin America research panorama ecosystem, which includes a lot of, as I said, public research made in universities, so here you can see.
ANA HEREDIA: It's a graphic, which is in this publication that is cited here done with Scopus data, and showing the participation of universities in the scientific output from 2010 to 2015. And you can see here Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Portugal, America, Latin America in general, Spain, Mexico, and then you can see the proportion of research there is performed in universities in Chile.
ANA HEREDIA: And for example, is bigger than the United Kingdom or the United States, for example. So the public aspect of the research is very strong here in the region. So here, 2/3 of researchers are located in universities. Mainly public ones, and this is where, as I said, the journals are published. Most than anywhere in the world scholarly journals are using open access publishing models, which originate from the public mission of the Latin American University.
ANA HEREDIA: But also from the consensus around the effectiveness of this shared knowledge. So in this ecosystem you can see on the right side there are a lot of systems being used in place National Research systems have created at different times, and with different purposes. Many databases on people, research output, institutions and projects under different criteria. And more importantly, managed by organizations that do not necessarily were talking to each other.
ANA HEREDIA: So we have different examples, and we recognize that these are huge efforts on infrastructure and data processing that had at the beginning, the aim of making the research output visible and accessible. But at the same time, these systems are siloed in their institutional countries and lack the important piece, which are the connectors, which are the identifiers that are key to promote a more inclusive science.
ANA HEREDIA: So in this scenario, it is important to think about systems that can articulate and they can exchange information with each other. And in this sense, I was mentioning the UNESCO recommendation about CRIS systems and RIM systems that are key to generate national systems of information. Which includes not only international databases, but also content that is located here in the region.
ANA HEREDIA: So this is important to for the production and the circulation of knowledge, the citizen science projects, and also considers the plurality of the languages used in the region. So here you can see, this slide you can see like three examples, three important initiatives that have been ongoing in the region for years and years, I would say.
ANA HEREDIA: And I would like to talk about the Spanish and Portuguese publication subsists in the region Thanks to this regional infrastructure based on own regional indexation systems. So I'm mentioning here Latindex, ScIELO Redalyc, and La Referencia where thousands of journals and theses and dissertations predominantly from universities are available in what we call here the Diamond Open Access where not the author or the reader pays to have-- to be able to publish or to read this work.
ANA HEREDIA: La Referencia plays a key role regionally. It's a federated network of institutional repositories. And it supports the national strategies of open access repositories by offering a platform with interoperability standards, sharing and making visible the scientific production from higher education and research institutions. So as I mentioned, this system where you have a national funding agency, and institutional repositories, and journal portals is quite a spread in the region.
ANA HEREDIA: All the countries have versions of this model, and these national funding agencies not only do the policies, but also evaluates the research and have control over these systems. So university journals and institutional repositories play a crucial role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and equal access to information here in the region. Very often outside of the International top scientific landscape, Latin America has developed as a region several remarkable initiatives to promote equal access to scientific knowledge and tools.
ANA HEREDIA: And these experiences that I'm sharing with you are really novel and very important in the region. So I was mentioning the importance of the CRIS systems. And in the region we have two main projects that are ongoing at the minute. The project in Peru and the project in Brazil. Other countries are still considering this possibility of building a National CRIS system to manage all the platforms and databases that are available.
ANA HEREDIA: And articulate this information to provide another level of services and products to the society. And here, I'm going to talk a little bit about the case of Peru. So in Peru there was a law. So it all started with a law of science technology and technological innovation, which establishes that the development, promotion consolidation, transfer, and dissemination of science, technology, and innovation are of public necessity, of national interest, and are fundamental pillars for the country's productivity and development.
ANA HEREDIA: So all started with a policy that was aligned with the National competitiveness and productivity plan. And it was confirmed by the government through a decree that made this a law. So the PeruCRIS system was built following euroCRIS recommendations. It uses an open software, which is DSpace, DSpace-CRIS.
ANA HEREDIA: And it had a financial support from the World Bank through an agreement with the 4Science and semi consortium. So I'm telling all of this to show how articulate and how diverse these projects are. So in terms of infrastructure, Concytec, which is the Peruvian National Council for Sciences, Technology and Technological Innovation, manages a national CC platform, a national aggregator for open access repositories and other applications for storing information about researchers and innovators, evaluators, institutions, publications, and projects.
ANA HEREDIA: The other great base we have in the region is the Brazilian CRIS, the BrCris, which is a project, which involves all the governmental funding agencies. Because here in Brazil, we have two national funding agencies Plus 27 regional funding agencies. So this project involves all of them, and also involves key players of the Brazilian research ecosystem.
ANA HEREDIA: It's leaded by the Brazilian Institute of Science and Technology Information, which is linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology. And it aims at building a national platform integrating education, science, technology, and innovation data to rationalize national information systems and make information available according to international best practices. Also it aims at creating a research information ecosystem that integrates state and national systems and optimize the knowledge management.
ANA HEREDIA: So I had an important part on this because this project-- let's say had a new view when I was working at ORCID and we closed a consortium for the use of this platform. So this is something I know very well, and I'm very keen on. So the Brazilian government is also a member of euroCRIS.
ANA HEREDIA: It is using open source software, as you can see here the VIVO software, but they all also using DSpaceCRIS. And this project is funded by Finablr, which is a research development-- the Brazilian Innovation Agency, and the research Development Foundation. [INAUDIBLE] And from that. So this project will integrate all these platforms and is also preparing an open science infrastructure based on La Referencia software platform.
ANA HEREDIA: These initiatives is articulated with open air, and the main goal is to repatriate Brazilian data that are in the repositories and databases around the world. So this is one part of this project. And yeah. So I'm coming to an end. I would like to mention here the principles of open scholarly infrastructure. And the related paper that are key for our discussions.
ANA HEREDIA: These are recent pieces of information published in 2020, and these principles proposed six principles around three core ones-- governance, sustainability, and insurance. Insurance is the part where we talk about open source, open data, available data, patents, patents on assertion and all these issues related to the sovereignty of the information.
ANA HEREDIA: So an important quote here is that everything we have gained by opening content and data will be under threat if we allow the enclosure of scholarly infrastructures. We propose a set of principles by which open infrastructures to support the research community could be run and sustain. So I'm leaving you also with this pieces of information and very interesting reading.
ANA HEREDIA: So why it is important to invest in open research infrastructure. So here at the right I am citing the OECD's recommendation of the council concerning access to research data from public funding. So we are talking about publicly funded information, the case of Latin America. And research infrastructure, as we said, should be understood beyond technicalities and budget.
ANA HEREDIA: The choices made in research infrastructure are key to research data sovereignty, which is crucial in countries where research is mainly publicly funded. Open source CRIS systems or RIM systems constitutes a key piece to advance the transition to open science with biblio-diversity-- sorry there is a little mistake here in the slides-- Biblio diversity and multilingualism.
ANA HEREDIA: National evaluation exercises should value open science practices, and experience like the ones I share with you in Latin America shows that the sustainability of scholarly infrastructures is only possible when there are strong governance principles and the community is engaged. The investment in shared and interoperable infrastructures is further developing-- is already developing the regional approach of a common problem.
ANA HEREDIA: So I'd like to leave you with an important document from CLACSO, which is the Latin American Council for social sciences, which is an organization that has been playing a central role in the discussion and directions of open science in the region, but not only. So they recently presented in the United Nations a document called open access and open science lessons learned in Latin America.
ANA HEREDIA: And I think this slide they shared is very clear on what the issues are here in the region, but I think they are also in the whole world. So one of the main concerns from a developing region perspective in ways forward. So one of the problems under funding of community owned infrastructure because of scarce funds directed to APCs, which is a main issue here in the region.
ANA HEREDIA: And the CLACSO recommendation would be to prioritize funding and resources dedicated to non APC, BPC community-based infrastructures and initiatives. And quality certification of its content. The other issue is about the researchers are rewarded only when publishing in mainstream journals with prestige industry indicators making invisible all the contributions.
ANA HEREDIA: And to solve this other issue, the recommendation is not only reward quality and relevance independent of publication venue, but also reward doing peer review of contents from community-based infrastructures, for example. The other issue that was leverage was the weak international dialogue cooperation and interoperability among community-owned infrastructures.
ANA HEREDIA: And for this there is a call for a more international collective action, have a stronger and collective voice. So this is my last slide. And thank you for your attention. And looking forward for the discussion with you.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Ana, thank you so much. That was tremendous. And so many organizations that I recognized within Brazil and folks that you and I have worked with that-- just incredible people. And thank you also for walking through what UNESCO is doing and how that is relevant to all of us. Carly. One moment as Ana brings down her slides, and we're ready for you.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Please go ahead--
ANA HEREDIA: Apologies.
CARLY ROBINSON: Great. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here with you all. So again, my name is Carly Robinson. I'm the assistant director for information products and services within the US Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information. And so I wanted to talk to you today about the open science infrastructure that we build in support within our office in the Department of Energy.
CARLY ROBINSON: And I'll give you a little bit of background and context for my office, but really kind of everything that we do in our history is really based on supporting, making science results publicly accessible and kind of open in this space. But where we fit within the Department of Energy, DOE funds about $12 billion each year in R&D funding. That funding goes out to DOE national laboratories, and grantees, and other institutions.
CARLY ROBINSON: And from that funding, there's-- we estimate about 50,000 R&D outputs that are coming out each year in the form of journal articles, accepted manuscripts, software, data, patents, multimedia. And that's where my organization, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, or OSTI, as we go by. We work to collect, preserve, and disseminate all of the DOE funded research and development results and make those available to the public, to DOE, to other agencies.
CARLY ROBINSON: And we do that through search tools that we build and provide. And also to make sure that all of the information that we have is very well indexed in common search engines and also to make its way towards where the researchers are already trying to find this information. And we have a long history that goes all the way back to the Manhattan Project, but most recently we were called out in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that says, the Secretary through OSTI shall maintain within the Department publicly available collections of scientific and technical information or research outputs.
CARLY ROBINSON: And we work to make all of that publicly accessible. And I think going back to what Kaitlin and Ana had mentioned-- when thinking about what it means to support open science infrastructure, most of the infrastructure that we're building and supporting is really to promote, and make accessible these DOE-funded research outputs. But we also do develop some of our infrastructure open source. So I think as was mentioned, those are kind of two key components.
CARLY ROBINSON: And so just to talk a little bit more about how our entire organization is based on supporting open science infrastructure, how to quickly kind of highlight our ORM chart. We have four assistant director organizations and offices. And each one of those are working in this space, but particularly, our office of applications, development, and operations. What they're working to do is to-- we have a team of developers that build all of our open science infrastructure, and code it within our office.
CARLY ROBINSON: So we're really lucky to have those folks on staff. We have our Office of Preservation and Technology, and that office is really working to support all of the physical infrastructure, all of the IT infrastructure that supports making the science open. And then we have two other program management offices. So the Office of Acquisition and Information Programs. They work on managing our ingest tool to collect the DOE-funded research results.
CARLY ROBINSON: And then my office, the Office of the Information and Product Services-- what we're really trying to do is support the search tools that OSTI provides and all of our persistent identifier services. So we have a number of strategic priorities, and I wanted to highlight some that really kind of build on this idea of open science infrastructure. So we develop and provide leading edge research tools to find DOE-funded information.
CARLY ROBINSON: We promote open science and linking research objects through our persistent identifier services. We really think persistent identifiers and linking all of this information is key within the open science space. We're integrating AI and machine learning into our workflows for many different reasons, but including increased metadata quality, and also increased search precision.
CARLY ROBINSON: We support strategic decision making through analytics of R&D outputs and are developing a lot of infrastructure in that space. And also, we partner with other federal agencies and the private sector to grow access to unclassified R&D results. We work with a number of federal agencies, for example, that the US National Science Foundation. We support some of their open science infrastructure, including the public access repository.
CARLY ROBINSON: So to quickly dig into kind of some of the infrastructure that we build that is supporting open science, I wanted to start from the beginning of our workflow and that's ingesting or collecting the research outputs that DOE funds. And so we have developed and maintain a system called E Link, energy link, which has been around for a little while. I think we're going on close to 20 years at this point.
CARLY ROBINSON: Obviously it's updated a lot, but this is infrastructure that we have in place to support grantees, and labs, and those that we fund to submit their research results and the associated metadata to our office. That is a requirement of getting DOE funding, is to provide this information to us. We of course, want to make it as easy as possible for folks to submit that information. So we provide user interfaces for them to submit the information that way.
CARLY ROBINSON: We also provide APIs for larger organizations to submit many records to us at once. And that's all through our E Link system. As I had mentioned, it's been around for a while. So we are currently working on kind of reinventing it, in what we're calling E Link 2.0. And so we're really excited to move forward and have a lot of work that's being done to re-imagine and make it easier for folks to submit information to us.
CARLY ROBINSON: Quality metadata is also really key to the work that we do. And so integrated into our E Link workflow, we have metadata curation. We ' a team of metadata curators who work to look at the metadata that's submitted. Folks do their best to submit high quality metadata to us, but we have a lot of optional fields that we'd like to include if it's possible. And so we have a team of curators who work on that and kind of all of that workflow is built into E Link and that infrastructure.
CARLY ROBINSON: Moving on to our persistent identify services. We see persistent identifiers is really a key piece to the open science space into that infrastructure. And so we support a number of persistent identifier services. On the research results side of things, we provide services assigning dois. It's also important for us to kind of build the PID infrastructure into existing workflows. And so for example, the assignment of dois for data, for technical reports, conference posters, presentations.
CARLY ROBINSON: That's built into the E Link submission workflow. DOE code a little bit different. I'll talk more about code in upcoming slides. But that's where folks who are developing software with DOE funding can go to submit their software and also search for DOE funded software, and we have our doi services built in there. We also support other federal agencies for assigning dois, and so we have our inter-agency data ID service that is a separate infrastructure that we built and help support other federal agencies.
CARLY ROBINSON: On the award side of things, we have a new service assigning dois to awards, and new infrastructure built around that. And that's our award doi service. We also lead the US government ORCID consortium and with leading that consortium, we're also an ORCID member and have integrations with ORCID both in E Link and in our search tool osti.gov. And then on the persistent identifiers for organization side of things, we maintain an organization authority and one thing that we're working on is rebuilding that to include persistent identifiers for organizations.
CARLY ROBINSON: Moving on to our search tools very briefly. We have our primary search tool osti.gov, which is where folks can go to find DOE funded research results. Everything that's publicly available is osti.gov. We of course, understand that not everyone is going to come to our search tools to find this information, so like I mentioned, we make sure all of our content is well indexed in search tools and other systems that researchers are regularly going to, to find this information.
CARLY ROBINSON: We also have some specialized search tools for specific resource types, and research output types. So DOE pages is for journal articles and accepted manuscripts. That was developed when we were implementing the US public access requirements. DOE Data Explorer for finding DOE funded data. DOE code for software.
CARLY ROBINSON: DOE patents for patents. And DEO science cinema for multimedia. We also help develop and facilitate a couple of interagency and global federated search tools. So science.gov is a federated search tool going across US science agencies. You can find research results kind of across the US government there. And also worldwide science which is an international federated search tool to find research internationally.
CARLY ROBINSON: Just to highlight two of our search tools, osti.gov again, is our primary search tool. You can come here to find all of the publicly available DOE funded information. We also have some general information about our organization, but that main search tool that we are showing on our home screen is where you can search for this information.
CARLY ROBINSON: We have built in semantic searching, so keyword concept mapping in the general search, but we also provide an advanced search where you can do term searching, and search by all of these specific metadata fields. In terms of the search results and the infrastructure that we're providing, they're trying to make it as user friendly as possible to refine by, sort your results, export results, export records. We provide our user interface, but we also have public APIs for folks to search across our information.
CARLY ROBINSON: And then when you dig into a record, we're working to enhance the metadata, we're working to connect persistent identifiers. You can see the little ORCID green symbol next to the author names. We're adding references. We're really trying to provide quality information and make it publicly available.
CARLY ROBINSON: Moving on to DEO code. I mentioned DEO code is a little bit different because this is-- in addition to being able to find DEO funded software, through DEO code, you can also submit software through daily code. So if you're DOE-funded, you're developing software, this is where you would go. And so on the submission side of things, we have a submission interface.
CARLY ROBINSON: We also provide an API. This is also where you can go to assign a doi to your software code. We also provide the search side of things, as you'll see, looks very similar to osti.gov. We provide all of that same functionality. The refine-by a little bit different. More tailored to software, but you can export your results, you can export records.
CARLY ROBINSON: And find all of the DEO-funded software here, and we also provide a search API as well. So with that, really appreciate your time and really appreciate our panel and Shelly. So with that happy to take questions when we move on to that section. Thank you.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Carly. That is so fantastic, and thank you for the leadership from the Department of Energy. I think that is just-- really sets the stage and others can follow. So now, we are going to open up for an opportunity to have a conversation and hear your questions and dig in. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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SHELLY NUTTAL: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the session, the importance of investment in open research infrastructure. I'm really excited to introduce you to our three speakers. I think you'll really enjoy how they frame this challenge, and highlighting the fact that we do have a recent UNESCO recommendations for open science that really leans in on infrastructure, research infrastructure, open science infrastructure. And there are still many challenges.
SHELLY NUTTAL: So our first speaker is Kaitlin Thaney. She's the executive director of invest in open infrastructure. Then Ana Heredia, who's an independent consultant, but I think we all know her so well and works with many of us, including here on the work that I do. Carly Robinson from the Department of Energy she's the assistant director for information products and services.
SHELLY NUTTAL: So Caitlin, please go ahead and bring up your slides, m you are welcome to start anytime.
KAITLIN THANEY: Thank you, Shelly. Let me get this thing on. Here we go. It's a pleasure to be with you all virtually for this. As Shelly had mentioned, my name is Kaitlin Thaney. I'm the executive director of Invest in Open Infrastructure. We're also known as IOI. And I'll be talking a little bit about our work and the framing for our work, and how we approach this broader question about how we can increase not only the adoption of open infrastructure, but also investment and sustainability of that.
KAITLIN THANEY: So starting on a high level of infrastructure is really having a moment. This has been a word that I wouldn't have ever thought of would be so much implanted in various sorts of conversations. Philanthropies have pivoted entire funding portfolios, like the Siegel Family Endowment towards infrastructure. We've seen infrastructure raised as a banner for equity, and also for change. Infrastructure institutes that have sprung up at academic institutions in various ways and forms.
KAITLIN THANEY: Funding programs and even industry plays, such as the group from OpenStack starting an open infrastructure foundation to help galvanize a conversation about how to better invest in various forms of infrastructure in this sort of capacity. But one question that comes up, especially given the remit for our work focusing on research and scholarship is-- are we all talking about the same thing?
KAITLIN THANEY: There are so many different dimensions whether you're talking about the infrastructure agenda in various political contexts around the world. If you're talking about that within institutions, you're talking about that in terms of technology. So when we talk about digital infrastructure, does that align with open? What are some of the differences there and bits of nuance? When we say public, do we mean for all, to what extent?
KAITLIN THANEY: When we say infrastructure, does that include all software and tools, or are we speaking about certain dimensions of that, that are important to prop up and to understand in the broader context. What about the social dimension of not only labor, but also the social infrastructure that helps bring together areas, especially when we talk about research and scholarship.
KAITLIN THANEY: And also, who gets to decide, what does count and what may not. So just for definition purposes, when we speak about infrastructure-- on a broad level. we look at the systems, protocols, software that research and scholarship rely on. The reliance relationship is really important in terms of the sort of way in which you think of roads and bridges, that if they were to be removed, there'd be a disruptive effect in the broader space.
KAITLIN THANEY: And so thinking of that in the technological aspect as well. But some additional dimensions kind of flavor when we think of open infrastructure, and these are just a few of the core attributes and ways in which we think about this that are continuously evolving. But embedded in that are also this idea that openness is ingrained at the operational and design level, that the solutions are open source.
KAITLIN THANEY: Content and data is open licensed. Transparent pricing, governance, some of these elements that there's been a significant amount of work to start to unpack some of these values alignment elements, and what that means in practice. Also thinking of open infrastructure as an enabler for communities to deliver collective benefit that should be maximally accessible. It should help enable and further equitable participation in the purest sense.
KAITLIN THANEY: And in terms of having adoption and usage with minimal, if not zero restrictions. And then also facilitating the creation and dissemination of open knowledge. That for our focus we're looking at contributing to the production, dissemination, creation, and sharing of information in the sort of [INAUDIBLE].. So as for why we're focusing on this. Invest in Open Infrastructure was established to really think about not only the financial and sustainability challenges, but also really to dig into areas that we need to focus more attention to.
KAITLIN THANEY: And this was best characterized to me by someone in the sector as, the ecosystem is sick. The current system for scholarly research and knowledge production it's geared towards commoditization, and even increasingly, commoditization of open access. Something that's supposed to be this big enabler, participation, and affordability, and knowledge sharing creation. And it's cost prohibitive.
KAITLIN THANEY: It's skewed towards profit generation in many ways of higher education operating as a business whereas and away from some of the other broader missions and aims. As well as commercial players, and it privileges the well-resourced. In our view this devalues and under served the broader community and it perpetuates a system that favors prestige, exclusion, and walled gardens.
KAITLIN THANEY: I like to think of this quote from Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine. And very well known for her concept of disaster capitalism. And I think we've seen this, especially over the last two years of the pandemic-- that this crisis like earlier ones could well be the catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interest in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities.
KAITLIN THANEY: We're going to go through just a few quick examples of when I talk about the ecosystem being sick, and why I view this as such a need, and the urgency and a catalyst for change. As many of you know and have been involved in broader discourse about, we recently saw, and especially back in December where it was approved, after being stalled by the Federal Trade Commission for a number of months-- Clarivate buying ProQuest for $5.3 billion.
KAITLIN THANEY: When we talk about resource scarcity and scarcity of funding in terms of the limitations of what's keeping infrastructure from being supported, we're also looking at $5.3 billion being invested in broader consolidation in the broader sector. This was framed also as a means of building an end-to-end pipeline of data from kindergarten through postgraduate.
KAITLIN THANEY: And thinking of the growing library market and the commoditization of that significant cross-selling opportunities. And again, thinking of all of the various components there where competition is affected, and also pricing for those that are at institutions that are now looking at fewer groups that are responsible for many of the products they rely on. This is an image of looking at the broader Elsevier landscape of the various tools and services that are under their portfolio and umbrella.
KAITLIN THANEY: We're also looking at this across a number of key players, so we're seeing this concentrated in a number of, or in an ever decreasing amount of groups in terms of influence. When we think about, not only the core services that are provided in terms of, they providing top prestige scholarly journals, but also then selling the data back to us that is used for promotion and tenure in institutions and job security, as well as owning other pieces of the tool landscape that are having data be used as a means of also feeding into this.
KAITLIN THANEY: This becomes increasingly ripe for conflict of interest, and also for additional kind of concentration again of that control. Privacy and security is also something we've seen, especially with this shift over the past two years to more of an online learning environment, online research environment, and work from home. That privacy has been getting shortchanged in many different ways, whether you're talking about Canvas, Proctorio, a number of other sort of services-- how those may affect some of those core rights that I know in the Library Bill of Rights that it articulates protecting that privacy for students and for users, and for researchers.
KAITLIN THANEY: And what is the responsibility there to ensure that we are not infringing on an ethical purpose on these sorts of rights. Also thinking of the broader relationships with the services that we are engaging in. And also paying significant amounts for access to, and engagement in as to where they are also doing business, and where they're getting their information. Sarah Lamdan who's a professor at CUNY Law here in New York, also on IOI's Community Oversight Council has written about this extensively, and has a book that'll be coming out this year about these corporations are no longer publishers that librarians are used to dealing with.
KAITLIN THANEY: The kind that focus on particular data types. Instead the companies are data barons, sweeping up broad swaths of data to repackage and sell. This is seen as normal practice in the broader ecosystem, and why we think that an investment in open in a structure that is community owned and community governed, and abides by more of the values that are touted by institutions is necessary. We need open infrastructure is an equalizer and as an enabler.
KAITLIN THANEY: Infrastructure is not neutral. Your technology choices are not neutral. Participation in open knowledge is not a passive or an apolitical act. I believe that we need to reassess our baseline assumptions that all tech platforms are inherently good and designed to increase freedoms and opportunity. And look at these questions more critically, and with an eye for more information to be assessed in terms of broader conversation and evaluation.
KAITLIN THANEY: So for IOI, we approach this in a few different ways. We conduct research, we strongly believe in evidence-based, not only giving, but also action. And we craft resources to help others assess, build, and make investment decisions about open infrastructure. And then we also work on putting those into action in terms of piloting solutions, soliciting community conversations and feedback, coordinating stakeholders in various ways to help further a shared agenda in this work.
KAITLIN THANEY: Over the course of the last year and a half, we've engaged with hundreds of researchers, practitioners, funders industry leaders, et cetera to start to better understand about how these decisions are being made. To then start to think about how that might be matched with the resourcing and investment-- not only within institutions, consortia, and scholarly societies, but also through the broader funding landscape at large.
KAITLIN THANEY: Some of the issues that have been flagged to us in terms of points of friction and tension are when it comes to time, what time can be invested in doing the due diligence and making some of these decisions versus what's available. And balancing the immediacy of some of the bigger challenges that have faced institutions in places of higher learning, especially over the past two years. Prioritization.
KAITLIN THANEY: Near term gain in terms of investing in some of these open tools versus long term investment. Also whose values get applied? There's broad sort of understanding that there are certain elements that are in line with the mission of an institution. But again, when it comes down to the efficiency, and also staffing and resourcing questions-- some of those can become deprioritized from the information we've gleaned from institutional leaders.
KAITLIN THANEY: Resourcing trade-offs and also this perceived resource scarcity and the effects on that. About where services might not feel like they can compete with other more well-resourced commercial offerings based on financial and business models that have been in place to help allow for broader scale and community engagement. And so in terms of some of the work that we've been building out at IOI.
KAITLIN THANEY: We recently launched a prototype called the Catalog of Open Infrastructure Services that looks to help address some of these information asymmetries. The same sort of way that you look at various sources of information. If you were to buy a stock or make a bigger investment, why shouldn't we have a broader baseline of information available so that we can have an elevated discussion about some of these tools and services.
KAITLIN THANEY: The aims of this is also to help foster a greater understanding of open infrastructure services, how they operate, cultivate a deeper awareness of how those services are provided. And prototype a means of standardizing-- making those key pieces of information available. Also this was done in consultation, not only with the project leads that are part of the initial prototype launch, but also with institutional leaders and funders conducted and gathered feedback through a series of focus groups to understand their decision making processes and what their core needs are as well.
KAITLIN THANEY: A sneak peek of this, and you can make these slides available, so you can go and you can poke through the catalog. We really looked at a couple of different ways in which we could start looking and making some of these decisions. So from a transformative influence, you can see here-- does it have an open code repository. What is the governance structure and process.
KAITLIN THANEY: Is that publicly available. Are there transparent pricing and cost expectations, and what does a rating among these core attributes look like. As well as when we look at broader data collection, we powered this also with looking at some of the financial information pulled from provider and funder websites, annual reports, if they're registered in the United States is a non-profit.
KAITLIN THANEY: Looking at information they filed with the US Internal Revenue service through a Form 990, surveys and interviews that we conducted with the service providers. And also on the right here, and this is included on our catalog page-- we also made sure that for every attribute we have represented, the data source is explicitly linked and we also are clear about what counts as evidence. So you can see some of the different attributes here.
KAITLIN THANEY: We talk about reliable technologies, trustworthy organizations, and equitable and inclusive services. We talk about governance structure and processes. What we're looking for there. And so trying to again, learn in the open as we start to build off of this, but also help ensure that we're keeping a baseline and better track record in accessibility of this information for others looking for it.
KAITLIN THANEY: We also, on the financial side, have done some analysis here. Basing on some of these bigger questions, and this is where the future elements of our work would go, about what key information did decision makers look for in guiding investment. What's missing. What has been surfaced in this work that may not be obvious to the broader community. So thinking of, for example, potential risks.
KAITLIN THANEY: If there is a dominance of sort of funding versus another. What does it look like to, in terms of earned revenue and sustainability versus reliance on grants. That can vary in terms of context for various organizations. It's not always as straightforward as just looking at the numbers. What trends and observations do we notice when we start to look at this information across a number of different tools and services.
KAITLIN THANEY: Have they been reported before? Why or why not. We're also looking at governance and also board representation and other elements here too. Thinking also about who we're designing those for. Piece of the work that we're further digging into right now, is that when we speak about the value of shared infrastructure, the "for whom" question becomes especially pertinent. Because that often favors the well-resourced and Western institutions and scholars.
KAITLIN THANEY: And so thinking about-- we talk about the various barriers to participation. The needs that we are prioritizing and investing in infrastructure, and making a case for various support for tools and services, what voices are missing from that discussion? And how can we get to them as well. In summary, in terms of what we're building towards-- thinking about how we can increase the efficiency, accountability, and negotiating power through trusted networks of members in the community.
KAITLIN THANEY: Also thinking of how we can empower institutional leaders, funders, et cetera to make better, and wiser, more efficient funding decisions to help build out a shared collective infrastructure. Also thinking about how we can align power influence, and budgets towards shared needs. And direct funding effectively in measurable ways and really have that anchored in evidence and also in transparent processes.
KAITLIN THANEY: And increase the amount of funding and diversity of those investing in open infrastructure to ensure that we're building a healthy, resilient, and sustainable future for research and scholarship. I'll close by saying that it's easier to say what's not enough than to identify what's needed to fix the system. We are digging into laying out this process and communicating that openly as we go.
KAITLIN THANEY: And we encourage you to follow along, but just to close, we believe open research and access to knowledge requires open infrastructure. And that the way in which we talk about equitable and accessible participation and knowledge production we need to similarly design our core systems and anchor those in community values and governance. And not see those as deterrents or things that slow down the process.
KAITLIN THANEY: That means shifting our reliance in a radical way from players that are misaligned with core values of the community, transparency, and collective responsibility. We'll make these available. There's a number of other links here if you want to learn more about our work. And my thanks for everybody here, and also to the panelists. Back to you, Shelly.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Kaitlin, that was absolutely fantastic. I'm so excited to learn about all of that work. Ana, please go ahead and bring up your slides. And please--
ANA HEREDIA: This was great Kaitlin. Thank you. So Hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you for the NISO team and also my co-panelists and Shelly for shepherding this session. So today, I'd like to share with you some experiences from Latin America, and give you some food for thoughts on why it is important to invest in open digital research infrastructure.
ANA HEREDIA: So I focused on digital infrastructure, as you could see from what Kaitlin just said. It's not only my field of expertise, but it's also because digital research infrastructure is at the core of current discussions around inclusion, equity, and diversity in the research information ecosystem. And at the core of the open science agenda recommendations and best practices.
ANA HEREDIA: So Latin America is a very interesting case of a region where both scientific research and communication of its results are activities mainly financed with public funds. Meaning that the state participation is key for research activities in all countries of the region. So scholarly journals are published within universities, and this is the region in the world with the greatest adoption of open access to scientific journals.
ANA HEREDIA: And I highlight are these common led regional initiatives that I'll share with you today, which are coupled with national and institutional open access journal portals and collaborative, non-commercial initiatives. So I'd like to start with this document, which final version was recently published. So these are the recommendations-- UNESCO recommendations on open science to be adopted by all the member states last year proposed it.
ANA HEREDIA: So let's see how it goes. Let's see how it goes. UNESCO recommendations work as an international standard setting and a legal document, a legal instrument. And it was developed through a regional balanced and multi-stakeholder inclusive and transparent consultation process. So this document says that one of the most urgent action needed areas of the long term investment in digital infrastructure is digital infrastructure.
ANA HEREDIA: And it also recognized the CRIS systems, or the RIM system. Current research information systems as one of these elementary infrastructures for the development of open science. UNESCO also makes it very clear that this digital infrastructure should be governed by the community, by the scientific community. And financed and sustained by governments under the observance of the needs of the societies in which they are.
ANA HEREDIA: So the fundamental concern addressed by UNESCO reports-- the UNESCO report is focused on international inequalities in terms of digital infrastructure, financial or language barriers. And that changes in the research practices and scholarly evaluation systems need to be supported by infrastructures that are aligned to the definitions of knowledge as a public and common good.
ANA HEREDIA: So in a recent article from Cousins and Colleagues, open research infrastructure was defined as the core elements that enable the creation of tools and services used by researchers. These tools and services are layers built on top of this foundational infrastructure. So this paper also highlighted that organizations enabling open research infrastructures must endorse the fundamental principles of equity value, trust, interoperability, sustainability, and community governance.
ANA HEREDIA: In this frame, this foundational infrastructure refers according to Bilder and Colleagues at SIMA-- storage, identifiers, metadata, and assertions. This is to give a little bit of the grounds of the experience that I would like to share with you. Starting with a little overview of the Latin America research panorama ecosystem, which includes a lot of, as I said, public research made in universities, so here you can see.
ANA HEREDIA: It's a graphic, which is in this publication that is cited here done with Scopus data, and showing the participation of universities in the scientific output from 2010 to 2015. And you can see here Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Portugal, America, Latin America in general, Spain, Mexico, and then you can see the proportion of research there is performed in universities in Chile.
ANA HEREDIA: And for example, is bigger than the United Kingdom or the United States, for example. So the public aspect of the research is very strong here in the region. So here, 2/3 of researchers are located in universities. Mainly public ones, and this is where, as I said, the journals are published. Most than anywhere in the world scholarly journals are using open access publishing models, which originate from the public mission of the Latin American University.
ANA HEREDIA: But also from the consensus around the effectiveness of this shared knowledge. So in this ecosystem you can see on the right side there are a lot of systems being used in place National Research systems have created at different times, and with different purposes. Many databases on people, research output, institutions and projects under different criteria. And more importantly, managed by organizations that do not necessarily were talking to each other.
ANA HEREDIA: So we have different examples, and we recognize that these are huge efforts on infrastructure and data processing that had at the beginning, the aim of making the research output visible and accessible. But at the same time, these systems are siloed in their institutional countries and lack the important piece, which are the connectors, which are the identifiers that are key to promote a more inclusive science.
ANA HEREDIA: So in this scenario, it is important to think about systems that can articulate and they can exchange information with each other. And in this sense, I was mentioning the UNESCO recommendation about CRIS systems and RIM systems that are key to generate national systems of information. Which includes not only international databases, but also content that is located here in the region.
ANA HEREDIA: So this is important to for the production and the circulation of knowledge, the citizen science projects, and also considers the plurality of the languages used in the region. So here you can see, this slide you can see like three examples, three important initiatives that have been ongoing in the region for years and years, I would say.
ANA HEREDIA: And I would like to talk about the Spanish and Portuguese publication subsists in the region Thanks to this regional infrastructure based on own regional indexation systems. So I'm mentioning here Latindex, ScIELO Redalyc, and La Referencia where thousands of journals and theses and dissertations predominantly from universities are available in what we call here the Diamond Open Access where not the author or the reader pays to have-- to be able to publish or to read this work.
ANA HEREDIA: La Referencia plays a key role regionally. It's a federated network of institutional repositories. And it supports the national strategies of open access repositories by offering a platform with interoperability standards, sharing and making visible the scientific production from higher education and research institutions. So as I mentioned, this system where you have a national funding agency, and institutional repositories, and journal portals is quite a spread in the region.
ANA HEREDIA: All the countries have versions of this model, and these national funding agencies not only do the policies, but also evaluates the research and have control over these systems. So university journals and institutional repositories play a crucial role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and equal access to information here in the region. Very often outside of the International top scientific landscape, Latin America has developed as a region several remarkable initiatives to promote equal access to scientific knowledge and tools.
ANA HEREDIA: And these experiences that I'm sharing with you are really novel and very important in the region. So I was mentioning the importance of the CRIS systems. And in the region we have two main projects that are ongoing at the minute. The project in Peru and the project in Brazil. Other countries are still considering this possibility of building a National CRIS system to manage all the platforms and databases that are available.
ANA HEREDIA: And articulate this information to provide another level of services and products to the society. And here, I'm going to talk a little bit about the case of Peru. So in Peru there was a law. So it all started with a law of science technology and technological innovation, which establishes that the development, promotion consolidation, transfer, and dissemination of science, technology, and innovation are of public necessity, of national interest, and are fundamental pillars for the country's productivity and development.
ANA HEREDIA: So all started with a policy that was aligned with the National competitiveness and productivity plan. And it was confirmed by the government through a decree that made this a law. So the PeruCRIS system was built following euroCRIS recommendations. It uses an open software, which is DSpace, DSpace-CRIS.
ANA HEREDIA: And it had a financial support from the World Bank through an agreement with the 4Science and semi consortium. So I'm telling all of this to show how articulate and how diverse these projects are. So in terms of infrastructure, Concytec, which is the Peruvian National Council for Sciences, Technology and Technological Innovation, manages a national CC platform, a national aggregator for open access repositories and other applications for storing information about researchers and innovators, evaluators, institutions, publications, and projects.
ANA HEREDIA: The other great base we have in the region is the Brazilian CRIS, the BrCris, which is a project, which involves all the governmental funding agencies. Because here in Brazil, we have two national funding agencies Plus 27 regional funding agencies. So this project involves all of them, and also involves key players of the Brazilian research ecosystem.
ANA HEREDIA: It's leaded by the Brazilian Institute of Science and Technology Information, which is linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology. And it aims at building a national platform integrating education, science, technology, and innovation data to rationalize national information systems and make information available according to international best practices. Also it aims at creating a research information ecosystem that integrates state and national systems and optimize the knowledge management.
ANA HEREDIA: So I had an important part on this because this project-- let's say had a new view when I was working at ORCID and we closed a consortium for the use of this platform. So this is something I know very well, and I'm very keen on. So the Brazilian government is also a member of euroCRIS.
ANA HEREDIA: It is using open source software, as you can see here the VIVO software, but they all also using DSpaceCRIS. And this project is funded by Finablr, which is a research development-- the Brazilian Innovation Agency, and the research Development Foundation. [INAUDIBLE] And from that. So this project will integrate all these platforms and is also preparing an open science infrastructure based on La Referencia software platform.
ANA HEREDIA: These initiatives is articulated with open air, and the main goal is to repatriate Brazilian data that are in the repositories and databases around the world. So this is one part of this project. And yeah. So I'm coming to an end. I would like to mention here the principles of open scholarly infrastructure. And the related paper that are key for our discussions.
ANA HEREDIA: These are recent pieces of information published in 2020, and these principles proposed six principles around three core ones-- governance, sustainability, and insurance. Insurance is the part where we talk about open source, open data, available data, patents, patents on assertion and all these issues related to the sovereignty of the information.
ANA HEREDIA: So an important quote here is that everything we have gained by opening content and data will be under threat if we allow the enclosure of scholarly infrastructures. We propose a set of principles by which open infrastructures to support the research community could be run and sustain. So I'm leaving you also with this pieces of information and very interesting reading.
ANA HEREDIA: So why it is important to invest in open research infrastructure. So here at the right I am citing the OECD's recommendation of the council concerning access to research data from public funding. So we are talking about publicly funded information, the case of Latin America. And research infrastructure, as we said, should be understood beyond technicalities and budget.
ANA HEREDIA: The choices made in research infrastructure are key to research data sovereignty, which is crucial in countries where research is mainly publicly funded. Open source CRIS systems or RIM systems constitutes a key piece to advance the transition to open science with biblio-diversity-- sorry there is a little mistake here in the slides-- Biblio diversity and multilingualism.
ANA HEREDIA: National evaluation exercises should value open science practices, and experience like the ones I share with you in Latin America shows that the sustainability of scholarly infrastructures is only possible when there are strong governance principles and the community is engaged. The investment in shared and interoperable infrastructures is further developing-- is already developing the regional approach of a common problem.
ANA HEREDIA: So I'd like to leave you with an important document from CLACSO, which is the Latin American Council for social sciences, which is an organization that has been playing a central role in the discussion and directions of open science in the region, but not only. So they recently presented in the United Nations a document called open access and open science lessons learned in Latin America.
ANA HEREDIA: And I think this slide they shared is very clear on what the issues are here in the region, but I think they are also in the whole world. So one of the main concerns from a developing region perspective in ways forward. So one of the problems under funding of community owned infrastructure because of scarce funds directed to APCs, which is a main issue here in the region.
ANA HEREDIA: And the CLACSO recommendation would be to prioritize funding and resources dedicated to non APC, BPC community-based infrastructures and initiatives. And quality certification of its content. The other issue is about the researchers are rewarded only when publishing in mainstream journals with prestige industry indicators making invisible all the contributions.
ANA HEREDIA: And to solve this other issue, the recommendation is not only reward quality and relevance independent of publication venue, but also reward doing peer review of contents from community-based infrastructures, for example. The other issue that was leverage was the weak international dialogue cooperation and interoperability among community-owned infrastructures.
ANA HEREDIA: And for this there is a call for a more international collective action, have a stronger and collective voice. So this is my last slide. And thank you for your attention. And looking forward for the discussion with you.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Ana, thank you so much. That was tremendous. And so many organizations that I recognized within Brazil and folks that you and I have worked with that-- just incredible people. And thank you also for walking through what UNESCO is doing and how that is relevant to all of us. Carly. One moment as Ana brings down her slides, and we're ready for you.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Please go ahead--
ANA HEREDIA: Apologies.
CARLY ROBINSON: Great. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here with you all. So again, my name is Carly Robinson. I'm the assistant director for information products and services within the US Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information. And so I wanted to talk to you today about the open science infrastructure that we build in support within our office in the Department of Energy.
CARLY ROBINSON: And I'll give you a little bit of background and context for my office, but really kind of everything that we do in our history is really based on supporting, making science results publicly accessible and kind of open in this space. But where we fit within the Department of Energy, DOE funds about $12 billion each year in R&D funding. That funding goes out to DOE national laboratories, and grantees, and other institutions.
CARLY ROBINSON: And from that funding, there's-- we estimate about 50,000 R&D outputs that are coming out each year in the form of journal articles, accepted manuscripts, software, data, patents, multimedia. And that's where my organization, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, or OSTI, as we go by. We work to collect, preserve, and disseminate all of the DOE funded research and development results and make those available to the public, to DOE, to other agencies.
CARLY ROBINSON: And we do that through search tools that we build and provide. And also to make sure that all of the information that we have is very well indexed in common search engines and also to make its way towards where the researchers are already trying to find this information. And we have a long history that goes all the way back to the Manhattan Project, but most recently we were called out in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that says, the Secretary through OSTI shall maintain within the Department publicly available collections of scientific and technical information or research outputs.
CARLY ROBINSON: And we work to make all of that publicly accessible. And I think going back to what Kaitlin and Ana had mentioned-- when thinking about what it means to support open science infrastructure, most of the infrastructure that we're building and supporting is really to promote, and make accessible these DOE-funded research outputs. But we also do develop some of our infrastructure open source. So I think as was mentioned, those are kind of two key components.
CARLY ROBINSON: And so just to talk a little bit more about how our entire organization is based on supporting open science infrastructure, how to quickly kind of highlight our ORM chart. We have four assistant director organizations and offices. And each one of those are working in this space, but particularly, our office of applications, development, and operations. What they're working to do is to-- we have a team of developers that build all of our open science infrastructure, and code it within our office.
CARLY ROBINSON: So we're really lucky to have those folks on staff. We have our Office of Preservation and Technology, and that office is really working to support all of the physical infrastructure, all of the IT infrastructure that supports making the science open. And then we have two other program management offices. So the Office of Acquisition and Information Programs. They work on managing our ingest tool to collect the DOE-funded research results.
CARLY ROBINSON: And then my office, the Office of the Information and Product Services-- what we're really trying to do is support the search tools that OSTI provides and all of our persistent identifier services. So we have a number of strategic priorities, and I wanted to highlight some that really kind of build on this idea of open science infrastructure. So we develop and provide leading edge research tools to find DOE-funded information.
CARLY ROBINSON: We promote open science and linking research objects through our persistent identifier services. We really think persistent identifiers and linking all of this information is key within the open science space. We're integrating AI and machine learning into our workflows for many different reasons, but including increased metadata quality, and also increased search precision.
CARLY ROBINSON: We support strategic decision making through analytics of R&D outputs and are developing a lot of infrastructure in that space. And also, we partner with other federal agencies and the private sector to grow access to unclassified R&D results. We work with a number of federal agencies, for example, that the US National Science Foundation. We support some of their open science infrastructure, including the public access repository.
CARLY ROBINSON: So to quickly dig into kind of some of the infrastructure that we build that is supporting open science, I wanted to start from the beginning of our workflow and that's ingesting or collecting the research outputs that DOE funds. And so we have developed and maintain a system called E Link, energy link, which has been around for a little while. I think we're going on close to 20 years at this point.
CARLY ROBINSON: Obviously it's updated a lot, but this is infrastructure that we have in place to support grantees, and labs, and those that we fund to submit their research results and the associated metadata to our office. That is a requirement of getting DOE funding, is to provide this information to us. We of course, want to make it as easy as possible for folks to submit that information. So we provide user interfaces for them to submit the information that way.
CARLY ROBINSON: We also provide APIs for larger organizations to submit many records to us at once. And that's all through our E Link system. As I had mentioned, it's been around for a while. So we are currently working on kind of reinventing it, in what we're calling E Link 2.0. And so we're really excited to move forward and have a lot of work that's being done to re-imagine and make it easier for folks to submit information to us.
CARLY ROBINSON: Quality metadata is also really key to the work that we do. And so integrated into our E Link workflow, we have metadata curation. We ' a team of metadata curators who work to look at the metadata that's submitted. Folks do their best to submit high quality metadata to us, but we have a lot of optional fields that we'd like to include if it's possible. And so we have a team of curators who work on that and kind of all of that workflow is built into E Link and that infrastructure.
CARLY ROBINSON: Moving on to our persistent identify services. We see persistent identifiers is really a key piece to the open science space into that infrastructure. And so we support a number of persistent identifier services. On the research results side of things, we provide services assigning dois. It's also important for us to kind of build the PID infrastructure into existing workflows. And so for example, the assignment of dois for data, for technical reports, conference posters, presentations.
CARLY ROBINSON: That's built into the E Link submission workflow. DOE code a little bit different. I'll talk more about code in upcoming slides. But that's where folks who are developing software with DOE funding can go to submit their software and also search for DOE funded software, and we have our doi services built in there. We also support other federal agencies for assigning dois, and so we have our inter-agency data ID service that is a separate infrastructure that we built and help support other federal agencies.
CARLY ROBINSON: On the award side of things, we have a new service assigning dois to awards, and new infrastructure built around that. And that's our award doi service. We also lead the US government ORCID consortium and with leading that consortium, we're also an ORCID member and have integrations with ORCID both in E Link and in our search tool osti.gov. And then on the persistent identifiers for organization side of things, we maintain an organization authority and one thing that we're working on is rebuilding that to include persistent identifiers for organizations.
CARLY ROBINSON: Moving on to our search tools very briefly. We have our primary search tool osti.gov, which is where folks can go to find DOE funded research results. Everything that's publicly available is osti.gov. We of course, understand that not everyone is going to come to our search tools to find this information, so like I mentioned, we make sure all of our content is well indexed in search tools and other systems that researchers are regularly going to, to find this information.
CARLY ROBINSON: We also have some specialized search tools for specific resource types, and research output types. So DOE pages is for journal articles and accepted manuscripts. That was developed when we were implementing the US public access requirements. DOE Data Explorer for finding DOE funded data. DOE code for software.
CARLY ROBINSON: DOE patents for patents. And DEO science cinema for multimedia. We also help develop and facilitate a couple of interagency and global federated search tools. So science.gov is a federated search tool going across US science agencies. You can find research results kind of across the US government there. And also worldwide science which is an international federated search tool to find research internationally.
CARLY ROBINSON: Just to highlight two of our search tools, osti.gov again, is our primary search tool. You can come here to find all of the publicly available DOE funded information. We also have some general information about our organization, but that main search tool that we are showing on our home screen is where you can search for this information.
CARLY ROBINSON: We have built in semantic searching, so keyword concept mapping in the general search, but we also provide an advanced search where you can do term searching, and search by all of these specific metadata fields. In terms of the search results and the infrastructure that we're providing, they're trying to make it as user friendly as possible to refine by, sort your results, export results, export records. We provide our user interface, but we also have public APIs for folks to search across our information.
CARLY ROBINSON: And then when you dig into a record, we're working to enhance the metadata, we're working to connect persistent identifiers. You can see the little ORCID green symbol next to the author names. We're adding references. We're really trying to provide quality information and make it publicly available.
CARLY ROBINSON: Moving on to DEO code. I mentioned DEO code is a little bit different because this is-- in addition to being able to find DEO funded software, through DEO code, you can also submit software through daily code. So if you're DOE-funded, you're developing software, this is where you would go. And so on the submission side of things, we have a submission interface.
CARLY ROBINSON: We also provide an API. This is also where you can go to assign a doi to your software code. We also provide the search side of things, as you'll see, looks very similar to osti.gov. We provide all of that same functionality. The refine-by a little bit different. More tailored to software, but you can export your results, you can export records.
CARLY ROBINSON: And find all of the DEO-funded software here, and we also provide a search API as well. So with that, really appreciate your time and really appreciate our panel and Shelly. So with that happy to take questions when we move on to that section. Thank you.
SHELLY NUTTAL: Carly. That is so fantastic, and thank you for the leadership from the Department of Energy. I think that is just-- really sets the stage and others can follow. So now, we are going to open up for an opportunity to have a conversation and hear your questions and dig in. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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