0.21 Recommendations

Recommendations

The necessary characteristics outlined above may be thought of as specifications for a humanities and socialscience cyberinfrastructure. Actually building something that answers to those specifications will require sustained effort andcommitment in at least eight areas:

1.invest in cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences, as a matter of strategic priority.

Addressed to: Universities; federal and private funding agencies

Implementation: Determine the amount and efficacy of funding that now goes to support developingcyberinfrastructure for humanities and social sciences from all sources; through annual meetings and ongoing consultation,coordinate the goals this funding aims to achieve; and aim to increase both funding and coordination over the next five years,including commercial investments that are articulated with the educational community’s agenda.

Senior scholars, research librarians, university leaders, state and national legislators, and members ofthe public interested in the cultural record should regard the development of the humanities and social sciencecyberinfrastructure as an essential strategic priority. Other countries already recognize this to be so. In European countriesand in Canada and Australia, humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure is more generously funded (relative to the sizeof the population) than in the United States, and research frameworks integrate the support of humanities and social scienceswith the support of science and engineering.

In 2005 the British Academy issued an academic policy review in which the leading recommendation was that“relevant UK institutions and bodies adopt a coordinated and coherent strategic approach to e-resource provision and access,based on research community needs.”

The German e-Science Initiative was announced by the German Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) in March2004, coupled with a call for proposals in the areas of grid computing, e-learning, and knowledge management. The e-ScienceInitiative and D-Grid were launched on September 1, 2005. Currently, BMBF is funding over a hundred German researchorganizations with €100 million [$124 million] over the next fiveyears. For the first three-year phase of D-Grid, the support is almost €20 million [$25 million]. One of seven projects currently funded under this initiative is TextGrid, described as a “communitygrid for text-based disciplines.”

In Australia $542 million Australian dollars ($405 million) is targeted for the National Collaborative ResearchInfrastructure Strategy, a major initiative under the Australian government’s “Backing Australia’s Ability—Building Our Futurethrough Science and Innovation” program. This program “aims to bring greater strategic direction and coordination to nationalresearch infrastructure investments” while providing researchers with “access to major research facilities and the supportinginfrastructure and networks necessary to undertake world-class research.”