0.30 As transparent as infrastructure: on the research of  (Page 7/13)

• is broadly useful to a public ,
• is therefore well enough understood that we are sure it is useful,
• is confidently expected to foster economic or research activity,
• should be funded by the public for the public,
• becomes invisible as its use becomes expected, and
• is maintained for the long term by some organization that has ongoing funding to maintain the infrastructure.

Now you can see the difference between research infrastructure and research. Research, by contrast, is not expected to be useful, necessarily, and certainly isn’t expected to be useful to a public. Research is about that which we don’t understand, while infrastructure shouldn’t really be experimental. Research is expected to be funded by the public, but we do not expect any one research project to be funded. Nor do we expect to fund a research project for the long term.

Cyberinfrastructure is supposed to foster research. The model can be said to have three parts that together are expected to generate research. The researcher is supplied by research grants to do research on research infrastructure. Well designed and well maintained infrastructure should lead to reduced supply costs and more research from each researcher. A well run system invests in all three (researchers, research supplies and research infrastructure). Investment in research grants supports researchers and pays for supplies. Investments in the infrastructure enhance the productivity of the researchers much as good roads support economic productivity.

This brings me back to definition. In effect, redefining something as infrastructure is a way of moving it from the category of research and therefore changing the urgency of its provision and changing the perception of who should fund it and maintain it. It is, in short, a great way to argue that some organization like a university or government should fund something in perpetuity rather than fund it as a grant would for a particular period and limited group. Calling something cyberinfrastructure distinguishes it from that which only a project needs and which is needed only for the duration of the research.

We can see the redefinition at work in how funding like CFI works. The Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the federal research funding agency for the humanities in Canada, traditionally supported a class of research called “research tools.” SSHRC, on their Standard Research Grants web page, gives the following examples of eligible tools:

• bibliographies, indices and catalogues of research collections;
• concordances and dictionaries (refer to SSHRC Research Data Archiving Policy);
• materials that facilitate access to archival holdings or collections such as repository guides, inventories of a group of manuscripts or of a body of archives, inventories or documentary materials, thematic guides to archival materials, records surveys and special indices;
• scholarly editions; and
• data series. (“Apply for Funding - Standard Research Grants”)

When CFI was introduced, the legislation defined “research infrastructure” in a way that included collections, computer software, and information databases. Proposals to CFI from the humanities, like the TAPoR project that I led, argued that certain research tools qualified as research infrastructure. We received funding to buy and set up tools that were the online equivalents to the research tools SSRHC funds. Faced with the significant new funding offered for research infrastructure, we negotiated with CFI to define humanities research tools as infrastructure. SSHRC even supported us in this and they continue to work closely with CFI to articulate the boundaries.