This document summarizes a presentation about supporting open infrastructure for research workflows. It discusses the importance of open infrastructure in enabling collaboration, preventing vendor lock-in, and supporting community-based development. It also addresses challenges in balancing different goals and uncertainties when making choices to support more open tools and platforms. Key considerations include required levels of openness, funding models, decision processes, and assessing options for replacement or parallel alternatives to current proprietary offerings.

1. (except logos)
Supporting open infrastructures ?
@MsPhelps
@jeroenbosman
How to balance goals, expectations and uncertainty
Bianca Kramer & Jeroen Bosman, Utrecht University Library
CILIP Event Managing the Research(er) Workflow, December 9 2019
https://tinyurl.com/CILIP-open-infra

2. The buzz

3. Supporting open infrastructure
Open infrastrucure - what?
Open infrastructure - why?
Open infrastructure - how?
Open infrastructure - who?

5. A model of the research workflow
preparation
analysis
writingpublication
outreach
assessment discovery

6. preparation
analysis
writingpublication
outreach
assessment discovery
Preparation:
• Define & crowdsource
research priorities
• Organize project, team,
collaborations
• Get funding / contract
Discovery:
• Search literature / data / code / …
• Get access
• Get alerts / recommendations
• Read / view
• Annotate
Analysis:
• Collect, mine, extract data / experiment
• Share protocols / notebooks /
workflows
• Analyze
Writing:
• Write / code
• Visualize
• Cite
• Translate
Publication:
• Archive / share publications
• Archive / share data & code
• Select journal to submit to
• Publish
Outreach:
• Archive/share posters
• Archive/share presentations
• Tell about research outside academia
• Researcher profiles/networks
Assessment:
• Comment / peer review
• Determine impact of research
output
• Determine impact of researchers

7. What tools/platforms do you offer/support?
preparation
analysis
writingpublication
outreach
assessment discovery

8. Research workflow infrastructure
- some aspects of openness
1.Which of these tool/platforms are open source?
2.Which are non-profit?
3.Do the data on the platforms have an open license?
4.Are these tool/platforms free (no cost) to your end users?
5.Are they community-governed?

9. Discuss at your table
How important do you consider these criteria
for research workflow tools and platforms?

10. https://tinyurl.com/workflow-choices
What do your values mean in practice?

11. Reasons for open infrastructure
● Enable collaboration and re-use (incl. reproducibility)
● Support researchers moving between institutions
● Prevent vendor lock-in (incl. of data)
● Provide insurance/exit plan (for availability)
● Support community-based development and innovation
● Contribute to common infrastructure
How does openness weigh against other goals/desires?

12. Six forms of vendor lock-in
DISINCENTIVES TO COMBINE OFFERINGS FROM VARIOUS VENDORS
1) UX and technical compatibility
2) Sales combinations and package deals
DISINCENTIVES TO SWITCH TO ANOTHER VENDOR
1) Knowledge investments
2) Data/procedure adaptation
3) Data applicability outside platform
4) Collaboration opportunity

13. Clarivate y y y y y
Digital Science
Research workflows - company ‘suites’

17. Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1314859
Trust in how it’s
run
Trust it will still be
there
Trust there is a backup
plan

18. Support open infrastructure - how?
i i
i
i
i
p
p
pp
p
pi
donations (structural/one-time)
membership (with/without direct benefits)
freemium(pay/license extra functionality)
per item fee (e.g. for archiving)
in kind support (e.g. development)
institutions
open infrastructure
providers
governance (e.g. advisory board)
advocacy (e.g. inform users)

19. A few cases
Search papers - (citation) database Locate open access papers
Annotation tools
platform
commenting
option
Reference management

20. A few cases [continued]
Archiving/sharing data Archiving/sharing preprints
Archiving/sharing postprint/AAM Researcher profile

21. A few cases [and also … ]
General open knowledge infrastructures

22. Making choices
In considering to support more open platforms/tools/technologies/services
for [activity x], what would be viable choices/approaches regarding:
● ‘Must have’ openness aspects?
● Funding models?
● Decision process in the institution, incl. the role of the library in that?
● Replacement or parallel alternative for current offering?
● The story you tell to researchers?
What would you need to make those choices a reality?

23. Check it out:
https://investinopen.org/https://scoss.org

24. Check it out:
Mapping the Scholarly
Communication Landscape.
Skinner K. (2019) Educopia
OA in the Open: Community
Needs and Perspectives.
Kennison R et al. (2019)
Principles of Open Scholarly
Infrastuctures Bilder G, Lin J,
Neylon C (2019)
SPARC Landscape Analysis
Aspesi C. et al. (2019) SPARC

25. (except logos)
Supporting open infrastructures ?
@MsPhelps
@jeroenbosman
How to balance goals, expectations and uncertainty
Bianca Kramer & Jeroen Bosman, Utrecht University Library
CILIP Event Managing the Research(er) Workflow, December 9 2019
https://tinyurl.com/CILIP-open-infra

27. Support open infrastructure - who?
Kennison R. et al. (2019) https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/g972d
Challenges for institutions/libraries:
● lack of information / need of overview of initiatives/criteria/vetting
● support content or infrastructure?
● support creation or usage of content?
● support own researchers vs. collective benefit?
● nice to have/additional or structural?
● who decides?

28. Support open infrastructure - who?
Kennison R. et al. (2019) https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/g972d
Motivations for supporting open resources - philosophical
● support of the institution’s mission and its strategic priorities
● enhancement of the institutional brand, particularly being seen as competitive
with or a leader among peer institutions;
● commitment to social justice, values-based thinking, and openness
● the importance of being seen as contributing to the conversation and the
community, even if the part that can be played is a small one

29. Support open infrastructure - who?
Kennison R. et al. (2019) https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/g972d
Motivations for supporting open resources - practical
● being able to show a clear return on investment and to provide indicators of
student success and faculty impact
● the importance of the availability and less restrictive use and reuse of
resources both for faculty and students
● consortial commitments, especially in reallocation of funds away from
commercial publishers
● requests by faculty or departments to support a particular project
● responding to institutional, local, and state politics

30. Support open infrastructure - who?
Kennison R. et al. (2019) https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/g972d
Motivations for NOT supporting open resources
● lack of available funds amid a plethora of new initiatives and products
● the complexity of the funding or access model or the decision-making and/or
payment process
● concerns about lack of governance, transparency, or long-term sustainability and
viability of the provider
● lack of support for, or resistance to, OA by faculty, administration, and/or
librarians
● local restrictions on supporting for-profit entities or state restrictions on public
institutions that require state money be spent on a tangible product or service.

31. Library/institutional considerations around using/investing in open?
The are so many (short term) uncertainties we will have to deal with:
● Are we the only ones doing this?
● What goes wrong when we do nothing?
● This is infra rather than content, decision lies with ITS
● This is so different, will require a lot of talking and permissions, while buying extra content is easy and
provides instant gratification
● When switching to using open tools you might lose influence on provider (no contract/money involved)
● The investment brings us nothing additional, it is an alternative, taking money away from buying additional
content
● There are many advantages to be had from procuring services/content with one provider
But OTOH, there are big long term advantages:
● It aligns with our policies, principles, declarations we have signed
● It provides a way out of ever stronger burden on budgets
● It offers ways to influence/co-govern the infrastructure
● We support (a new generation of) researchers that wish to work openly

32. TRUST REACH
REPUTATIO
N
opportunity,
impact
network effect,
community
size
follow the crowd:
“if many people
publish there,
it must be OK”
“my output
is safe
there”
“other good / important
content is published
there”
selectivity
?
branding ?
“if platform has high usage, it must be technically sound”
”users value
the
platform”
visibility
effect
# people that
(want to)
publish
on this platform
Bianca Kramer & Jeroen Bosman
https://101innovations.wordpress.com