6: The Present and Future Organization and Governance of European Research Infrastructures (Benedetto Lepori, Katharina Cramer, Simcha Jong)
In the evolving landscape of science, technology and innovation, research infrastructures (RIs) play an increasingly pivotal role and are seen as crucial instruments in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. Within the European Union (EU), the European Council has driven the establishment of RIs through the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) (Bolliger & Hallonsten 2020), “a strategic instrument to develop the scientific integration of Europe” (ESFRI n.d.). Most developed countries outside the EU have likewise incorporated RIs as integral components into their research policy. Yet, despite its prominence in scholarly and practitioner circles, the notion of RIs remains relatively ambiguous. It is composite and complex, not least because of the large differences in how research is performed by different scholarly communities and how the use and importance of RIs are perceived by society and policymakers, the latter of which often support RIs through public funding. It thus comes as no surprise that the term ‘research infrastructure’ is used for a wide variety of entities from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH), a virtual network enabling researchers in the Arts and Humanities to share knowledge and research material. With few exceptions (Cramer & Hallonsten 2020; Lepori & Cavallaro 2023), we lack systematic analyses of how RIs are defined and operated in different scientific domains, how the landscape of RIs is going to develop in the future, as well as of how this is related to labeling and funding processes at national and European levels. The proposed track "The Present and Future Organization and Governance of European Research Infrastructures" aims to provide a systematic analysis of RIs focusing on the following key questions:
- How are RIs defined and how do definitions vary between different research fields? Can we identify common elements between different definitions?
- How are RIs governed and funded in different fields? How do the identified models depend on the social and cognitive characteristics of each field?
- To what extent can national and European roadmapping processes take this diversity into account, and provide suitable institutional and financial frameworks?
- How does the interplay between collaboration and competition among European RIs impact their effectiveness, sustainability, contributions to scientific advancement and building “better worlds”?
The track will be organized into academic sessions where researchers can present ongoing research on the above-described topics and an expert panel.
Keywords: research infrastructures, research policy, science policy, big science, European Union