I’m at “Shaking It Up: How to thrive in — and change — the research ecosystem,” an event co-sponsored by Digital Science, Microsoft, Harvard, and MIT. (I think, based on little, that Digital Science is the primary instigator.) I’m late to the opening talk, by Geoff Bilder [twitter:gbilder] , dir. of strategic initiatives at CrossRef. He’s also deeply involved in Orcid, an authority-base that provides a stable identity reference for scholars. He refers to Orcid’s principles as the basis of this talk.

Geoff is going through what he thinks is required for organizations contributing to a scholarly cyberinfrastructure. I missed the first few.

It should transcend disciplines and other boundaries.

An organization nees a living will: what will happen to it when it ends? That means there should be formal incentives to fulfill the mission and wind down.

Sustainability: time-limited funds should be used only for time-limited activities. You need other sources for sustaining fundamental operations. The goal should be to generate surplus so the organization isn’t brittle and can respond to new opportunities. There should be a contingency fund sufficient to keep it going for 12 months. This builds trust in the organization.

The revenues ought to be based on series, not on data. You certainly shouldn’t raise money by doing things that are against your mission.

But, he says, people are still wary about establishing a single organization that is central and worldwide. So people need the insurance of forkability. Make sure the data is open (within the limits of privacy) and is available in practical ways. “If we turn evil, you can take the code and the data and start up your own system. If you can bring the community with you, you will win.” It also helps to have a patent non-assertion so no one can tie it up.

He presents a version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for a scholarly cyberinfrastructure: tools, safety, esteem, self-actualization.

He ends by pointing to Building 20, MIT’s temporary building for WW II researchers. It produced lots of great results but little infrastructure. “We have to stop asking researchers how to fund infrastructure.” They aren’t particularly good at it. We need to get people who are good at it and are eager to fund a research infrastructure independent of funding individual research projects.

Categories: liveblog, science, too big to know dw