Short abstract:

The interprofessional collaborations in citizen science, within the European COESO project, showcase governance examples and raise the question of how an infrastructural service like the VERA hub can support their diversity.

Long abstract:

This contribution will draw from the experience of the European project COESO - Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues, that supported ten citizen science pilot projects involving the social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines, and developed a new service - the VERA hub - now included in the portfolio of services of the OPERAS RI. Within COESO, each pilot presented a distinct type of collaboration between different kinds of stakeholders: a diversity of composition accompanied by a diversity of organizational forms. Not only this diversity contributed to generating new knowledge, but it also contributed to experimenting with innovative knowledge sharing practices. They also fed the VERA hub design, in order for it to be better suited to support research-oriented multistakeholders collaborations. Understood as interprofessional collaborations, the COESO citizen science pilots showcased governance examples and raised the question of how an infrastructural service like VERA can support their diversity. If the design of an infrastructural service can be instrumental for specific types of governance - thus influencing new models of knowledge production, attention must be paid during all the design phases of the service: how it manages to gather users as well as their possible interactions, which resources it provides, and which practices is it more likely to support and shape? This is particularly important in the context of citizen science, which aims to enable collaboration between a multiplicity of actors, who belong to different socio-professional groups, and with potentially divergent needs and objectives.

Short abstract:

This paper will highlight the work of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an international, member-based organisation, focused on the development of infrastructure and community activities that reduce barriers to data sharing and exchange.

Long abstract:

An organisation and a community, the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an international, member-based organisation has focused on the development of infrastructure and community activities that reduce barriers to data sharing and exchange, and the acceleration of data- driven innovation. The RDA builds the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing and reuse of data, working towards a future where researchers and innovators openly share and re-use data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society.

This paper will present the RDA’s work and process of co-creating knowledge in the form of community-created and peer-reviewed Outputs and Recommendations, and the value of the real-world applicability of the developed solutions. We address associated challenges that an organisation as diverse as RDA may face, introducing RDA TIGER, the EC-funded project that provides support services that address these challenges and support the RDA WG’s, ultimately enabling the creation of high quality Outputs. We also look at RDA as a platform for enabling and facilitating cross-RI collaborations.

With RDA recently having celebrated its 10-year anniversary, over 14,000 members from 151 countries, 89 Groups working on addressing challenges and co-creating solutions for global data interoperability challenges, 71 Outputs and over 200 Adoption Cases, highlighting the Work of RDA as an example of a truly global and cross-disciplinary community who comes together to both produce scientific knowledge but also enhance good practice for the good of the wider scientific and research community will produce valuable insights.

Short abstract:

We are proposing 'Agile Science' for digital transformation research with the Research Innovation Hub as exemplary case of a restructured co-creation process in research: An innovative framework fostering co-creation from the outset, ensuring inclusive and accountable research.

Long abstract:

The dynamics of the digital transformation generate complex research questions: disruptive technological upheavals are entangled with serious social consequences. Their effects and mechanisms need to be researched to be better understood. But the complex societal changes brought along by digital innovations challenge science and research. So far, research on digital transformation often does not adequately meet the challenges created by the intersection of social and technological aspects. Borrowing from participatory and co-creative innovation approaches, we suggest the concept of "Agile Science", i.e., a balanced structure for disciplined work and interdisciplinary collaboration, which allows for adaptability and participation while opening the process for co-creation with a broad community of citizens. With this, we want to shape the future of innovative and responsive research on digital transformation by facilitating co-creation already at the very outset of generating research questions and research programs. We aim to support a shift toward an understanding of, and accountability for, increasing complexities while staying in touch with affected citizens, actively integrating them into the research process and generating relevant findings and solutions for them. At the conference we will introduce the main ideas of this concept and illustrate this exemplarily by describing the Research Innovation Hub at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) and how it shapes the structural level of doing research. We wish to discuss how to take our approach even further to guarantee that co-creation with citizens is not exploitative or extractive but really integrates them on a concrete decision-level.

Short abstract:

Transdisciplinary research is increasingly important to academic life and to research policy and funding. Yet, there still are pervasive barriers to adequately support and promote TDR. We enquire how universities alliances can be understood as “in-between” spaces to strengthen TDR.

Long abstract:

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is increasingly important to academic life and to research policy and funding. Responding to societal challenges demands multi-partner collaborations between experts with diverse disciplinary and societal (practical) backgrounds. Yet, research policy and bi-partisan funding find pervasive barriers to adequately support and promote TDR, as shown in the last report from the European Commission (2023). As a way out, many European universities are organizing permanent alliances where scientific partners develop programs with societal partners, and students are trained in doing TDR (for instance, the Erasmus Plus initiative for New European Universities). In this paper, we enquire how these “in-between” spaces constitute means to strengthen and further develop TDR. After UvA Rector Peter-Paul Verbeek, in-between spaces refer to collaborations between universities and societal actors to address fundamental applied questions, pursuing knowledge and impact. We draw on a qualitative survey among European researchers and interviews with funders, policy makers and practitioners. We complement these with our own extensive experience as leaders and members of universities alliances and TDR projects. Elaborating on the STS literature on boundary organisations and on societal impact, we open a discussion directed towards three main audiences: research policy makers, including funding organisations, researchers and practitioners. We discuss the conceptual implications of collaborating between science and society and some of the practical bottlenecks and conclude by indicating the most urgent issues to strengthen the productive interactions between science and society in intellectual and physical in-between spaces.

Short abstract:

Unequal engagement in the creation and operation of RIs contributes to epistemic injustices and tensions between new and existing subcommunities in the nuclear fusion field. While RIs hinder newcomers’ integration in this sense, I show that RIs can also accelerate the integration process.

Long abstract:

How can RIs created for/by one subcommunity meet the needs of another? What happens if they do not? How to balance RI specificity with flexibility?

Not all subcommunities of the nuclear fusion community joined its quest to harness fusion energy as a viable energy source at the same time. While some have been involved from the beginning, the efforts of others have only recently become relevant to the fusion endeavor. When studying the joining process and experiences of one such new subcommunity –control engineers– I observed epistemic injustices and tensions between the newcomers and the traditional subcommunities –mainly groups of physicists.

I argue that unequal engagement of these subcommunities in the creation and operation of RIs is contributing to these epistemic injustices and tensions. The nuclear fusion community relies on numerous research (& development) infrastructures. The two subcommunities –each with different knowledge production goals– have unique needs when it comes to RIs in their field. Over time, the historically more dominant subcommunity of physicists created fitting organizational arrangements for their knowledge aspirations, including RI types and designs. It is only through gaining trust that the newcomers can make changes to existing RIs, changes that, however, solidify the newcomers’ status and research approach –a self-reinforcing process that drives the newcomers’ integration.

By discussing the simultaneously constraining and catalyzing role of RIs for control engineers’ integration in the fusion community, I aim to shed light on the challenges that may occur in other RI-dependent fields when new disciplines knock on their doors.

Short abstract:

This paper argues that the development of a rare cancers RI requires the emergence of ‘trading zones’ where various professional users engage. It highlights the substantial moral labor underlying the development of shared goals and how valuation practices contribute to the redistribution of power.

Long abstract:

The development of research infrastructures (RI) in healthcare is being encouraged through a nexus of technological advancements, investments through large European Union (EU) funding schemes, and (upcoming) changes in EU policies and regulations meant to facilitate the collection, integration, and (re-)use of health data, such as the European Health Data Space proposal. This paper zooms in on IDEA4RC, a Horizon Europe-funded project focusing on the development of a rare cancers RI and involving professional users of substantially different backgrounds: medical researchers, digital technology developers, data managers, legal experts. We were tasked to deploy a Responsible Research and Innovation framework within IDEA4RC, which allowed us to collect data in the RIs’ early development stages using different approaches: two co-creation workshops, 31 interviews, and participant observation of online and offline project meetings. The findings developed through thematic data analysis suggest that the development of this RI requires the emergence of ‘trading zones’ where the various users engage. We find that not only changes in the types of knowledge and expertise of the different types of professionals involved are required, but also the reconfiguration and alignment of values central to each community of professional users. Whereas previous studies have focused on the epistemic practices and negotiations required for ‘trading zones’ (Galison, 1999; Gorman, 2009; Collins et al, 2007) to emerge, we highlight the substantial moral labor underlying the development of shared goals and show how complex valuation practices contribute the redistribution of power and influence between the medical researchers and technical developers involved.

Short abstract:

This contribution investigates how organised scientific interests shape infrastructure policy in the European Union.

Long abstract:

How do organised scientific interests shape the agenda of science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy in the European Union (EU)? I address this question by investigating how the so-called “CERN for Artificial Intelligence (AI)” initiative, a proposal to organize Europe’s AI research in a CERN-like ecosystem, made it onto the agenda of EU policymakers. Drawing on the interest group as well as agenda-setting scholarship and triangulating data from multiple sources, I argue that the Confederation of Laboratories for AI Research in Europe (CLAIRE), a scientific interest group, pushed the initiative onto the EU’s informal policy agenda through direct and indirect lobbying. I also demonstrate that the CERN for AI has so far failed to enter Brussel’s formal agenda because of turf battles between organized scientific interests, the lacking experience, resources, and time of its advocates, the historical fragmentation of EU AI research policy and funding as well as the initiative’s framing. My findings add to the study of STI policymaking in the EU, which has so far almost exclusively focused on individual policymakers, bureaucrats, or political institutions as policy entrepreneurs while neglecting to study the role of organised scientific interests in STI policy agenda-setting.