the evolving landscape of federated research data ... evolving...deff denmark’s electronic...

The evolving landscape of

Federated Research Data Infrastructures

- a study by Knowledge Exchange -

DeiC conference, Fredericia, DK. 10-11 October 2018

content:

• Introducing Knowledge Exchange

• Recent KE work on Research Data

• FRDI report

– Why

– How

– Conclusions

• Consistency with previous and later studies

– Funding of RDM

– Open Scholarship

– Overall findings

• Q&A

2



• FRDI report

– Why

– How

– Conclusions


– Funding of RDM



• Q&A

3

The members of Knowledge Exchange

KE consists of partner organisations in six countries:

DFG (German Research Foundation, Germany)

Jisc (United Kingdom)

DEFF Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (Denmark)

SURF (Netherlands)

CSC IT Centre for Science (Finland)

CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France)

4

Knowledge Exchange

• A collaborative network of partner organisations that work on the

development of information infrastructures and services for research and

higher education at a European level

• Partners collaborate since 2005, to improve their performance

• Aims at structural exchange, sharing, and creation of knowledge and

expertise at operational, topical, and strategic level

• Key elements for structural exchange:

– in each of the member organisations a 2-day position working for KE

– experts groups that exchange knowledge and propose activities

– budget to finance activities: workshops, studies, consultants, events

– the KEO office to coordinate, manage and facilitate

5

Aim of KE

Vision

• Our vision is to enable open scholarship by supporting an

information infrastructure on an international level.

Mission

• We are increasing the impact of partner activities by exchanging

knowledge between experts in the area of digital technologies for

research and higher education.

• We are exchanging best practices, practical solutions, and innovative

approaches to improve all aspects of each partner's performance.

This will ensure that they can create more effective and efficient

solutions.

_________________________________________________________

KE works for the benefit of the six partners. Any activities KE undertakes are in

alignment with the needs of and with the agreement of the partners.6

• Petition to support OA to EC

• Interoperability between

Repositories and CRIS

• OA success stories website

• Multi-national journal licensing pilot

• Response to EC RD ambitions: a

Surfboard for Riding the Wave

• Persistent Identifier project (URN-

NBN, Handle, DOI at one table)

• Guidelines for interoperable Usage

Statistics for OpenAIRE

• Discussion paper Open Knowledge

(eco-system approach)

• Authority Files (controlled

vocabularies)

• Author Identifier Summits (ISNI,

ORCID at one table)

• Value, Cost, Pricing, Sharing,

Funding of RDI

• Sustainable Business models of OA

services

• Research Software Sustainability

• Briefing Paper on Funding RDM

and related RDI

• Incentives and motivations to share

data

Illustration of KE interest and output

… and many more

Current areas of work

Open Access Expert Group

OA

Monitoring

PreprintsOA

Monographs

KE Open

Scholarship Advisory Group

(KEOSAG)

OS and

Research(er)

Evaluation

Economy of

OS - Use

cases and

storytelling

Economy of

OS –

Conceptual

work

Research

SupportExpert Group

Advisory Group

Task & Finish Group

Partner Exchange 8



• FRDI report

– Why

– How

– Conclusions


– Funding of RDM



• Q&A

9

Recent work on Research data

• KE Expert group on Research Data between 2010 and 2018

• working on openness and reuse of data at European level

The Value of Research Data, landscape study of

data metrics and of the use of datasets in science to

stimulate data sharing. Recommendations and

solutions.

Incentives and Motivations for Sharing Research

Data, analysis of what sharing data entails, and what

makes/prevents researchers to share.

Training and skills for RDM comparing status quo in

KE countries, collecting training materials to share,

recommendations for training of RDM skills.

10



• FRDI report

– Why

– How

– Conclusions


– Funding of RDM



• Q&A

11

The FRDI report – Why federalisation happened?

• The management of research data became an intrinsic part of the academic

research endeavour, across all organisational functions, disciplines …

• So infrastructures were built to validate, access, share, reuse and curate

data based on the principles of open research data. By many …

• The result: fragmentation and dispersion, lack in transparency,

interoperability and sustainability, different sets of technologies, players and

competencies. Confusion …

• The response: allowing both data generators and data users to easily make

use of data services and support services we all build federated research

data infrastructures …

• The report aims to better understand this ‘federalisation’, or ‘federated-ness’:

the expectations, consequences, experience in practice

12

The FRDI report – How?

Interviews with 16

FRDIs in the

six KE countries

Various disciplines:

physics, life/health,

environmental,

social, humanities,

multidisciplinary

Operating at national or

international level,

generic/broad or delivering

specific services

Questions on:

Purpose, function and

organisation;

views on drivers, culture,

challenges, value,

and more

What is an FRDI?

What practices

and services

do FRDIs cover?

Involving users!

Engage stakeholders!

What challenges

do they face?

What is the impact

of FRDIs?

Lessons and implications

for EOSC

What drives FRDIs?

Bottom-up / Top down

What is an FRDI?

• FRDIs can apply to research disciplines across the spectrum, including

physical sciences, life/health sciences, environmental sciences, social

sciences and the humanities; they may also be multidisciplinary.

All disciplines: similar infrastructure drivers, characteristics or functions.

Health sciences and social sciences: sensitive and confidential data, so

FRDIs need to address data protection, legal and ethical constraints

• There is no single definition of ‘federated’.

Common, generic articulation emerging from the interviews:

‘Essentially, a federated infrastructure is one where a range of distributed

services are coordinated by an overarching level.’

15

The push/top-down drivers to establish an FRDI

• Two broad sets of factors: push and demand

1. push factors, with a top-down character, following a hierarchy:

– Top-level: driven by social and political imperatives or concerns

– Next level: driven by national public policy requirements

– Lower level: driven by players’ objectives in the broad research

environment

Example

Top level: desire to establish open societies

Next level: government and public agencies aim for open data

Lower level: funders, universities, infrastructure providers acting

16

The demand/bottom-up drivers to establish an

FRDI?• Two broad sets of factors: push and demand

2. Demand, or bottom-up factors, reflecting varied different research

cultures: :

– Highly collaborative (for instance, high energy physics, astronomy)

– Less accustomed to e-research culture (some of the humanities).

• Note: There is also a crossover between push and demand factors.

Example:

national or international (top down players) try to meet the needs and

expectations of the research communities (so fostering a bottom-up dialogue)

17

What challenges do FRDIs face?

• Long-term financial uncertainty

– Funding: typically project grants allocated for finite periods

– So not responding to a strategic plan

– Various sustainability issues

(Not a surprise, several reports identified the need for improved funding

approaches for (international, cross-discipline infrastructures

• User involvement and stakeholder engagement

– The many levels between top (coordination) and bottom (use)

– Complexity of collaboration between many (very different) stakeholders

– Balancing act between demand and supply; between providers,

consumers and prosumers; between cost and benefit

18

More challenges FRDIs face

• FRDIs are far from static! They (need to / are forced to) constantly

evolve

– Wide range of changing practices, services and delivery models

– Dynamically change with changes in research and researchers’ needs

– No single model of service provision, or universal template

Examples:

The FRDI’s service offer, usually addresses the entire research data lifecycle.

This holistic approach requires:

– easy, intuitive seamless access, distributed resources, whatever location.

– AAI (authentication, authorisation, identification) systems and regulations

– usability/interoperability; data standards; security

– ethical and legal issues, particularly

19

Other challenges FRDIs face

• The complexity and fragmented nature of the research data

environments in which they evolve …

– different legal frameworks

– administrative systems

– funding regimes

– regulations and policy environments

– the range of different user needs

• Combined with slow processes such as …

– cultural change

– identifying reliable sources of finance

– ensuring compatibility of standards

– addressing the maze of legal and regulatory requirements

20

How do you know an FRDI is successful?

• Many FRDIs have processes in place to evaluate impact …

– measuring usage in a quantifiable (but in practice, often a limited) way

– formal review mechanisms overseen by governance bodies

• Cost-effectiveness (economies of scale) of the FRDI …

– quantifying the measurement of (economic) success remains difficult

21

What to do with the report outcomes?

• New, emerging FRDIs can anticipate on the challenges:

– Be aware of the push (top-down) and demand (bottom-up) drivers and

the need to make them match

– Ensure a strategy is in place for long-term funding / sustainability

– Pay utmost energy in user engagement and in stakeholder engagement

– Prepare for the dynamics, understand the challenges of a holistic

approach

– Don’t underestimate the fragmented-ness of the environments

– Don’t think you can move forward quickly

– Know that is will be hard to prove that an FRDI is a success

Cost-effectiveness (economies of scale) of the FRDI

22

Recommendation to currently built FRDIs (EOSC, EUDAT, OpenAIRE, …)

The emergence of EOSC (and other European) FRDIs is welcome

• having the same rationale as national infrastructures

• albeit at a pan-European scale

• with the beneficial scaling up that this could imply

EOSC (and other European FRDI’s future success will depend on

• the consensual formulation of a well thought-out business and finance

model

• a solid governance structure, which capitalises on a clear division of tasks

between the governance body and the different resource providers.

• putting user needs at its centre

EOSC might add most value if it evolves as an aggregator of existing

services, rather than as a provider of new, centralised tools

23



• FRDI report

– Why

– How

– Conclusions


– Funding of RDM



• Q&A

24

Consistency with previous and later studies?

Funding RD management and related services (2016)

• The funding of RDI, enabling RDM, comes from a great

variety of sources and institutions that have different

responsibilities and that operate at local, national and

international levels. Significant parts of the funding have

particular disciplinary dimensions.

• The funding actors, levels and disciplines are not part of

a coordinated structure. This situation presents a huge

challenge to the sustainability of RDM.

25

Deal with the complexity of Open Scholarship

Complexity …

• Open has many connotations and consequences

• “Open” is a principle, but “digital” is technology

• Scholarship has many actors and stakeholders

• Open Scholarship is embedded in the real world

• Open Scholarship is part of the ‘disruption’ trend

– Opportunities

– Challenges

… a focus on limited areas/situations is not enough!

Need to look at the big picture as well …

• at least 3 dimensions: research phase, arena, level …

• identify how these interact

… assisted by a model to get a grip and find a common terminology

26

KE Open Scholarship Framework

27

Consistency with previous and later studies?

‘Economy of Open Scholarship - conceptual models’

(to be published in parts, 2018/2019)

• Open Scholarship challenges are a unique mixture of

- and cannot easily be explained by - standard

economic, social, organisational and innovation

models, digital network behaviour and historic

developments (nor by the KE OS framework ).

• Communication and alignment between macro, meso

and micro-level actors is problematic, as well as

alignment of shared objectives between meso-level

players.

• Collective Action theory may help to find direction.

28

Overall findingsWorking in FRDI environments, working on FRDI establishment or

enhancement (e.g. improving funding structures, research evaluation, data

sharing, publication models) one must

• Prepare for the dynamics, understand the challenges of a holistic approach

• Not underestimate fragmented-ness of actors, processes, sub-environments

• Be aware of the push (top-down) and demand (bottom-up) drivers and the

need to make them match

• Ensure a strategy is in place for the long-term sustainability

• Pay utmost energy in user engagement and in stakeholder engagement

• Not think you can move forward quickly

• Accept it will be hard to prove the (change within an) FRDI is a success

FRDIs

• Are an essential part of the Open Scholarship environment

• This OS environment, or eco-system, is complex and hard to understand

• Work is done, and progress made to improve understanding.29

More information:

www.knowledge-exchange.info

[email protected]

http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/

mailto:[email protected]

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