Open Science/Week 10: Open Science Infrastructures

Learning Outcomes

• Explain the role of infrastructure in making open science possible
• Describe gaps in the current infrastructure of open science
• Describe challenges in making open science infrastructure, inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable.

Readings

“Whose Infrastructure? Towards Inclusive and Collaborative Knowledge Infrastructures in Open Science” by Angela Okune, Rebecca Hillyer, Denisse Albornoz, Alejandro Posada, Leslie Chan in ELPUB, Toronto, Canada; 2018, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 20 pages.

“Open is Not Forever: A Study of Vanished Open Access Journals” by Laakso, M., Matthias, L., & Jahn, N in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2021. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 14 pages.

Discussion Question

Identify an example of infrastructure relevant to your research context. Describe one strength and one weakness of this infrastructure. Focus on the extent to which your example is inclusive, collaborative, and/ or sustainable.  Conclude your post with a question for others in the class.

Alternative discussion question: If you (as discussion leader) can identify one or two examples of open infrastructure familiar to your class and relevant to their research context, have the class apply concepts from the reading to evaluate the specific example(s) on dimensions of inclusivity, collaboration, and sustainability.

This week also offers the opportunity for an open data activity using this dataset on open access journals: Vanished Open Access Journals (Version 3) by Laakso, M., Matthias, L., & Jahn, N. available on Zenodo, Meyrin, Switzerland: CERN, 2020.

Self-check Questions

1 What is the main point of the Cape Town, South Africa, example, from the introduction to “Whose Infrastructure?” by Okune and colleagues?

	Infrastructure is threatened by climate change.
	The private sector should play a larger role in providing infrastructure.
	Infrastructure is owned by no one but needed by everyone.
	Infrastructure may appear neutral, but it reflects politics, power, and privilege.

2 Which of the following are examples of open science infrastructure discussed in "Whose Infrastructure?" by Okune and colleagues?

	co-creation of a shared vocabulary.
	co-development of a framework for governance of research and data
	co-design of a research contract
	construction of public libraries

3 In “Whose Infrastructure?” Okune and colleagues advocate for open science infrastructure that does which of the following things? Choose the best answer.

	recognizes complex identities and diverse forms of expression
	is deliberately and constructively inclusive
	takes into account the diversity of human experiences and forms of knowing.
	all of the above

4 Which of the following were the main findings of the study by Laakso, Matthias, and Jahn, “Open is not Forever”?

	Open access journals that eventually vanished had typically been active for about 6 years.
	The problem of vanishing journals only affects open access journals, not subscription journals.
	Open access journals that eventually vanished typically remained accessible for about 2 years after they became inactive.
	Humanities and social science open access journals were relatively more likely to vanish.

5 What is meant by the phrase “triggered content” in the article “Open is not Forever” by Laakso, Matthias, and Jahn?

	content marked to indicate some readers may find it traumatizing.
	content that is frequently censored by governments
	content that is behind a paywall
	content made available by a preservation service after an event, such as a publisher no longer making the content available