Criteria for Open Infrastructure

This document provides a breakdown of concrete questions and criteria for open infrastructure projects in the scholarly space. See Defining Open InfrastructureDefining Open Infrastructure
Defining Open Infrastructure

An initial exploration of the conceptual frame of open infrastructures (OI) and how they map onto the landscape of projects.

From the IOI website:


We define infra... for a more detailed discussion of how we conceptualize open infrastructure. We want to acknowledge that the following definitions and conceptualizations come from particular perspectives with their own privileged histories and trajectories.

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” Toni Morrison, Beloved

3+1 Dimensions of OI

What is an open infrastructure project and what isn't? An seemingly innocent questions that quickly leads to the common hodgepodge of conflicting definitions deriving from a multitude of worldviews, cultures & economies, missions & goals, and dreams & realities across the globe. The answer to the question of what counts as open infrastructure, thus, will always depend on the particulars of who is asking and who is answering.

To overcome this challenge, or at least acknowledge its complexity, we propose to re-consider the question as one of degrees and relationality. How open and how "infrastructural" does a project enter into the relation with its scholarly community of users? Within that conceptual and methodological framework, we propose 3+1 analytic dimensions to asses open scholarly infrastructure projects:

1. Infrastructureness. The infrastructure-like characteristics of a project independent of their current implementation, scope, reach or scale.
2. Scholarlyness. The relevance to scholarly activities avoiding preconceived notions of what "proper science" ought to look like and including research-related areas such as education or citizen science.
3. Openness. Openness conceived as more than open licenses or transparency of operations. We center the idea of openness as a radical tool for change and betterment of our communities.
4. Transformative influence. To foster and enable change, we want to actively seek out projects projects that shine light on or operate in the fringes of infrastructures, scholarship, and openness for the betterment of the absent and silenced voices.

The first three dimensions should be understood as orthonogal, meaning that a project can be more or less infrastructural, tightly or loosely connected to scholarship, and open or closed, while, the transformative influece of a project can be traced across all of the previous three dimensions.

In what follows, we break down each dimension into sub-categories derived from the amazing work of others before us such as Leigh Star's dimensions of infracturesinfrastructure
What is infrastructure?

Technical implementation




Visibility f Scholar
Technical implementation
Examples




End user == tech person
Tools, platforms
Manifold


End-user =/= tech person
Software, programs
OJS


Developers
Libraries
 


Developer not even publisher
Standards, specifications
 




Dimensions of infrastructure

It is already interesting to... and the Principles of Open Scholarly InfrastructurePrinciples of Open Scholarly Infrastructure
Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure

Link: https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/

Principles

Governance


Coverage across the research enterprise – it is increasingly clear that resea... (POSI). Concepts from both frameworks have been remixed¹ and restructured to fit into and further structure the 3+1 dimensions of open infrastructures.

[infra]structureness

Infrastructure has become an important buzzword for research institutions, funders, and policy-makers, and scholars around the world. While we typically think of the global digital technologies that scholarship operates on, many more tools and services can be conceived to display infrastructure-like characteristicsinfrastructure
What is infrastructure?

Technical implementation




Visibility f Scholar
Technical implementation
Examples




End user == tech person
Tools, platforms
Manifold


End-user =/= tech person
Software, programs
OJS


Developers
Libraries
 


Developer not even publisher
Standards, specifications
 




Dimensions of infrastructure

It is already interesting to.... Due to their complex nature, infrastructures are rarely imagined and created in their final form; rather an incremental and modular chain of intentional and emergent changes lead to those structures that we typically refer to as infrastructure. Thus, in order to include the many potentials and imaginatives in the landscape of scholarly infrastructures, we propose to capture the infrastructureness of a project rather than making binary cuts that warrant the inclusion or exclusion from potential funding streams.

⊕Example: The road network as a classic example of public, physical infrastructure might have initially hindered the understanding of taxi networks (and more recently the addition of platforms for on-demand gig economy) as infrastructures.

That is to say, instead of attempting to categorize these projects on their current (or early) technical implementations, we propose to investigate how they relate to the end-user, communities of practice, and other surrounding (infra)structures.

• Visibility
  • Is the project visible to the end-user in the scholarly community?
• Embeddedness
  • Is the project built-on and integrally connected to other systems and practices?
• Standardization
  • Does the project plug into other technical or social systems in standardized ways?

[schol]arlyness

To-do & elaborate: Write text that describes that scholarship is another contentious concept that we attempt to disentagle. It is more than the usual categerization with the research lifecyclescholarly communication
What is scholarly communication?

related notes: [[publishing]], [[open access]]

Definition

Traditionally the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books.


General services

Linking



Project

Reading
Writing
Analysis


Publishing




Education


Research Lifecycle

The research lifecycle is one of the common approaches to break down the broa... might indicate. We are explicitly also considering other related practices and activities such as learning and training in scholarship and other efforts that don't directly tie into the academy (e.g. citizen science).

⊕Example: Just because commercial freight trains run on the same tracks as passenger trains it doesn't make the rail network either industrial or civic infrastructure.

• Learned as membership
  • Is the use of the project learned as part of the membership of a scholarly community?
• Conventions of practice
  • Is the infrastructure integral to parts of scholarly practices?
  • Which part of the research cycle or scholarship is the infrastructure associated with?

[open]ness

To-do & elaborate: The understaning of openess as a focus on community over the individualistic committment to notions of freedom as in licenses that enable re-use. Connect to the principlies of scholarly infrastructure that provide a good framework for open practices and governance structures that ensure community value.

⊕Example: Just because commercial freight trains run on the same tracks as passenger trains it doesn't make the rail network either industrial or civic infrastructure.

• Governance
  • Is the project stake-holder governed?
  • Are operations transparent?
  • Does the project operate a non-discriminatory membership model?
• Sustainability
  • Is the infrastructure operated on a non-profit model?
  • Is the infrastructure operated mission-driven and community measured?
  • Does the infrastructure address financial and operational needs regardin project time and infratructure time?
• Community insurance
  • Does the infrastructure use open licenses for their code and data?
  • Does the infrastructure ensure accessibility (not only availability) of code and data?
  • Does the project avoid enforcing patents?

[transf]ormative

To-do & elaborate: The practice of "responsible agency" by considering the histories and trajectories of infrastructures in their local, social settings and especially looking for the absences and silences of those communities that were excluded.

We also understand openness as a "radical practice" with the potential to bring about positive change and social justice. Open infrastructures resonate and harmonize with a "polyphony of perspectives" which can only be achieved by an active effort to look beyond the established structures and listening to the voices of the otherwise suppressed.

Often, in the terms of infrastructures, these efforts translate into the resolving of spatial, temporal, and social tensions (Star also calls these tensions of reach and scope). We are, thus, specifically looking for projects which navigate and find innovative solutions to the local/global, short-term/long-term, social/technical, western/non-western tensions within the scholarly space.

⊕Example: Building a network of charging ports for electric vehicles rather than extending the coverage of gas stations.

• Infrastructureness
  • does the project develop new standards and/or question established ones?
• Scholarlyness
  • Does the project support non-western epistemologies?
  • Does the project support non-English speaking communities?
  • Does the project support knowledge creation outside of academic circles?
  • Does the project support non-hegemonic perspectives on gender, sex, ethnicity, and race?
• Openness
  • Does the project promote or enable open access?
  • Does the project project use decentralized modes of governance and sustainabilty such as a worker cooperative?

Summary

Q	Question	Dimension
1	Is the end-user typically aware of the project in use?	infra » transparency
2	Is the project built-on and integrally connected to other systems and practices?	infra » embeddedness
3	Does the project plug into other technical or social systems in standardized ways	infra » standards
4	Is the infrastructure learned as part of the membership of a scholarly community?	schol » membership
5	Is the infrastructure integral to parts of scholarly practices?	schol » conventions of practice
6	Which part of the research cycle is the infrastructure associated with?	schol » conventions of practice
7	Is the project stake-holder governed?	open » governance
8	Are operations transparent?	open » governance
9	Does the project operate a non-discriminatory membership model?	open » governance
10	Is the infrastructure operated on a non-profit model?	open » sustainability
11	Is the infrastructure operated mission-driven and community measured?	open » sustainability
12	Does the infrastructure address financial and operational needs regardin project time and infratructure time?	open » sustainability
13	Does the infrastructure use open licenses for their code and data?	open » community insurance
14	Does the infrastructure ensure accessibility (not only availability) of code and data?	open » community insurance
15	Does the project avoid enforcing patents?	open » community insurance
16	does the project develop new standards and/or question established ones?	transf » nfrastructurness
17	Does the project support non-western epistemologies?	transf » cholarlyness
18	Does the project support non-English speaking communities?	transf » cholarlyness
19	Does the project support knowledge creation outside of academic circles?	transf » cholarlyness
20	Does the project support non-hegemonic perspectives on gender, sex, ethnicity, and race?	transf » cholarlyness
21	Does the project promote or enable open access?	transf » penness
22	Does the project project use decentralized modes of governance and sustainabilty such as a worker cooperative?	transf » penness