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Abstract
Social and organizational factors play a fundamental role in infrastructure development. Studying the history of different kinds of infrastructures such as railroads, telephony, and the internet with the goal to help guide and consolidate the US National Science Foundation‘s vision of cyberinfrastructure, historians and social scientists concluded that “Robust cyberinfrastructure will develop only when social, organizational, and cultural issues are resolved in tandem with the creation of technology-based services” (Edwards et al. 2007 ). Realizing the vision of cyberinfrastructure requires new cultures and structures, in which scientists are eager to adopt and support new modes of research and education based upon broad and open access to ‘cyber’ resources including high-performance computing, online instruments and observatories, visualization and collaboration services, and, most of all, data and information (Bement 2007 ).
In the Geosciences, many disciplinary fields need to overcome substantial social and cultural hurdles in order to establish such communities and build and grow an effective Geoinformatics system with broad community acceptance, support, and involvement. For example, Geoinformatics cannot function without an underlying structure that ensures that all relevant data is captured, documented, and accessible in proper digital format. Geoinformatics efforts - especially those that build and operate digital data collections – need to engage their respective science communities in identifying and tackling cultural and structural problems for open data sharing and ensure that the design of their systems responds to community concerns. Among the cultural, structural, and political hurdles that impede the development of new data infrastructures are missing ‘Best Practices’ and policies for data publication or data submission to public archives (or missing enforcement thereof) and the conspicuous lack of incentives for data sharing for the individual researchers, who often fear disadvantages in their career advancement if easy access to their data in digital data resources circumvents the original journal publication of the data and leaves them without being properly cited to receive credit for their data.
This presentation will highlight challenges encountered, successes achieved, and lessons learned during 10 years of creating new data infrastructure in Geochemistry, and describe the emerging culture change in the geochemical community. Topics will range from design approaches for geochemical data systems and definition of data standards, to initiatives to establish community-wide best practices and policies for data publication engaging professional societies and editors and publishers of scientific journals, to the advancement of international agreement on the requirements and approaches to global data exchange.
References
Paul N. Edwards, Steven J. Jackson, Geoffrey C. Bowker, and Cory P. Knobel. "Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design." Report of a Workshop on History and Theory of Infrastructure: Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures. January 2007. http://www.si.umich.edu/InfrastructureWorkshop/
“Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery”, NSF Report No. nsf0728. http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/index.jsp
About the speaker
Kerstin Lehnert is the Director of the Geoinformatics for Geochemistry Program at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and Administrative Director for Research at LDEO.
Over the past ten years, she has been leading the development and operation of several closely related data and information management systems for the Geoscience such as EarthChem, PetDB, and the System for Earth Sample Registration.
Her current foci are the networking of Geoinformatics systems on a national and international scale, and the involvement of developing countries in Africa in Geoinformatics developments. Kerstin has a PhD degree in petrology from the University of Freiburg in Germany.