Research report author: Saman Goudarzi
Previously, we shared a draft report on our preliminary investigation into defining open scholarly infrastructure and invited your comments and questions. We now share the final version of this report.
IOI strives to build on the efforts of others working to improve funding and resourcing for the open infrastructure on which scholarly research relies. As an organization, one of our aims is to enhance our shared understanding of infrastructure in scientific research and scholarly communication. We believe that a more profound understanding of this area will have substantial consequences for how organizations providing research and scholarship services are supported and engaged with. This report serves as an initial stage in a continuous process that the organization intends to refine and develop over time.
In this preliminary investigation, we first examined a body of literature that includes works across the fields of anthropology, scholarly communications, international development studies, science and technology studies, and infrastructure studies. We synthesized the characteristics and dimensions defined in the literature we reviewed to produce the initial draft, which we then opened for public comments for two weeks. Our research team then synthesized the feedback from the community to create the final report that we hope gives more divergent perspectives that have enriched our understanding of open infrastructure in research and scholarship.
We would like to thank everyone who has spent time contributing to this process – your valuable input has enabled us to further question our assumptions, exposed us to new areas of literature, and strengthened our collective understanding. We have preserved the commented version of the draft report in our public Zenodo community collection.
The release of this final report is not the end, but rather, the beginning of the work and conversation towards a more sophisticated framework for understanding open infrastructure for research and scholarship. Ultimately, we aspire to use the insights gleaned from this literature review to construct a comprehensive theoretical framework that can offer structure and assistance for future projects. We hope that this document will continue to spark discussions and curiosity in the broader community.
If you have any private questions or comments regarding this report, please contact research [at] investinopen [dot] org.