Towards a Semantic Interoperable Flemish Research Information Space: Development and Implementation of a Flemish Application Profile for Research Datasets

In Flanders, Research Performing Organizations (RPO) are required to provide information on publicly financed research to the Flemish Research Information Space (FRIS), a current research information system and research discovery platform hosted by the Flemish Department of Economics, Science and Innovation. FRIS currently discloses information onresearchers, research institutions, publications, and projects. Flemish decrees on Special and Industrial research funding, and the Flemish Open Science policy require RPOs to also provide metadata on research datasets to FRIS. To ensure accurate and uniform delivery of information across all information providing institutions on research datasets to FRIS, it isnecessary to develop a common application profile for research datasets. This article outlines the development of the Flemish application profile for research datasets that was developed by the Flemish Open Science Board (FOSB) WorkingGroup Metadata and Standardization. The main challenge was to achieve interoperability among stakeholders, which in part had existing metadata schemes and research information infrastructures in place, while others were still in the early stages of development.

Bringing the Outside In

Chapter 2, Bringing the Outside In, examines the industrial infrastructures within which the burgeoning profession of public relations coalesced: rail, steel, and coal, and the simultaneous development of information infrastructures to situate these industries as paragons of democracy in the American imagination. It was in struggles over labor rights, workers’ rights, employee welfare, and industrial reform that the practice of public relations forged its methods, as scions of power and privilege attempted to manage the “external environment” of public and political opinion to reduce friction for the machinations of heavy industry. While the “external environment” does not directly map onto the natural environment, we see in these struggles the porousness of the boundaries between the inside and the outside of industrial production, allowing industrial leaders to control the outside world in addition to the one within their walls.

New frontiers of migration research - making migration information infrastructures visible

The nature and production of migration statistics are in flux. Where there used to be ‘migration data’ produced by states and collated by (supra)national agencies with the aim of understanding and recording migration flows, now there are a myriad unofficial data sources and processing collaborations which produce migration and mobility data as a by-product of both commercial and governmental processes. This paper brings together the migration studies with the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature to take stock of the theoretical and empirical implications of these new data sources for both migrants and for the links between migration and broader social processes. We identify migration information infrastructures: configurations of data assemblages which involve private and public sector actors, where data originally collected for one purpose (billing customers, sharing social information, sensing environmental change) become repurposed as migration statistics. We explore the implications of such migration information infrastructures for migration researchers: what are the entanglements that such infrastructures bring with them, and what do they mean for the ethics and practicalities of doing migration research?

Digital assemblages, information infrastructures, and mobile knowledge work

We theorize mobile knowledge workers’ uses of digital and material resources in support of their working practices. We do so to advance current conceptualizations of both “information infrastructures” and “digital assemblages” as elements of contemporary knowledge work. We focus on mobile knowledge workers as they are (increasingly) self-employed (e.g., as freelancers, entrepreneurs, temporary workers, and contractors), competing for work, and collaborating with others: one likely future of work that we can study empirically. To pursue their work, mobile knowledge workers draw together collections of commodity digital technologies or digital assemblages (e.g., laptops, phones, public WiFi, cloud storage, and apps), relying on a reservoir of knowledge about new and emergent means to navigate this professional terrain. We find that digital assemblages are created and repurposed by workers in their infrastructuring practices and in response to mobility demands and technological environments. In their constitution, they are generative to both collaborative and organizational goals. Building from this, we theorize that digital assemblages, as individuated forms of information infrastructure, sustain stability and internal cohesion even as they allow for openness and generativity.

Scientific Facilities as a Subject Matter of “Infrastructure Law”: Une Approche Québéсoise

The article deals with the original approach of Canadian French-speaking province (federal entity) to legal regulation of scientific facilities as a type of infrastructural objects governed by “infrastructure law.” The author firstly proves that the expression “scientific facility” and “Megascience” represent no more than the specific types of social infrastructure and, thus, generally denoted in legal instruments as “research infrastructure” which may be qualified as “large” (Megascience), “medium”, “small” etc. Further the article explores the modern legislation of Quebec which, unlike other countries, has decided to create a full-fledged “infrastructure law” governing, amongst other types of infrastructure, the research infrastructure. The article points out and analyses the particularities and principle findings of Quebec infrastructure laws and by-laws: the “supraministerial” governance of all infrastructure projects, the general public infrastructure company (Quebec Society of Infrastructures) etc. The latest developments in the Quebec “infrastructure law” relating to information infrastructures are also taken into account.

Towards Culture-Aware Smart and Sustainable Cities: Integrating Historical Sources in Spatial Information Infrastructures

This article addresses the integration of cultural perspectives in the smart city discourse and in the implementation of the UN Agenda 2030; it does so specifically with respect to land patterns and land use. We hope to increase the ability of relevant stakeholders, including scientific communities working in that field, to handle the complexity of the current urban challenges. Culture is understood here in the broadest sense of the word, including the values and conceptualizations of the world, and the modes of technological creation and control of the environment. This concept of culture varies among stakeholders, depending, in particular, on their activities, on the place they live in, and also depending on their scientific background. We propose to complement existing targets that are explicitly related to culture in the UN and UNESCO agendas for 2030, and introduce a target of culture awareness for city information infrastructures. We show that, in the specific case of land patterns and land use, these new targets can be approached with historical data. Our analysis of the related core functionalities is based on interviews with practitioners, draws on insights from the humanities, and takes into account the readiness of the existing technologies.

‘A method for safe transmission’: the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club

In the 1870s, microscopy societies began to proliferate in the United States. Most of these societies attracted microscopists from surrounding cities, but the American Postal Microscopical Club, modelled on the British Postal Microscopical Society, used the postal system to connect microscopists scattered across the country. Club members exchanged microscope slides and notes following a chain-letter system. The main objective of the club was to teach its members how to make permanent slides. Preparation and mounting methods required technical skill, which was, as even club members had to admit, difficult to learn without personal instruction. Yet members developed ways to share craft knowledge through the post. Drawing on the private notes of a member and published reports on the slides circulated, this paper challenges the widespread assumption that the generation of craft knowledge depended on the co-location of artisans. It argues that microscopists’ knowledge of preparation methods was intertwined with their skill in building and navigating information infrastructures, and that by tracing these infrastructures we gain a better understanding of how craft knowledge travelled in the late nineteenth century.

Rethinking Educational Assessment from the Perspective of Design Thinking

Because human processes are subtle, complex, and contextualized, computational representations of those processes face highly significant unmet design challenges. Design Thinking (DT) offers a potential new paradigm of creativity and innovation in education capable of effecting meaningful culture change. DT is nonlinear but encompasses elements of empathy, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and tests that may freely move as needed from and to each other. DT's empathic focus on end users' needs suggests educational measurement's information infrastructures will have to coherently integrate assessment and instruction across multiple levels of complexity in communication. Applying DT reveals the need to attend to previously undeveloped technical issues in communication. Especially important are developmental, horizontal, and vertical forms of coherence, and denotative, metalinguistic, and metacommunicative levels of complexity. New solutions emerge when classrooms are reconceived as meta-design ecosystem niches of creativity and innovation structured from the bottom up by flows of self-organizing information. Recently identified correspondences between educational measurement and metrology support efforts aimed at developing multilevel common languages for the communication of learning outcomes. Prototype reports illustrate how emergent measured constructs can be brought into language in ways that integrate developmental, horizontal, and vertical coherence across levels of complexity. Coherent information infrastructures of these kinds are capable of adapting to new circumstances as populations of persons and items change, doing so without compromising the continuity of comparisons or the uniqueness of locally situated knowledge and practices.

Job analyses of Earth science data librarians and data managers

This study’s purpose is to capture the skills of Earth science data managers and librarians through interviews with current job holders. Job analysis interviews were conducted of fourteen participants –six librarians and eight data managers—to assess the types and frequencies of job tasks. Participants identified tasks related to communication, including collaboration, teaching, and project management activities. Data specific tasks included data discovery, processing, and curation, which require an understanding of the data, technology, and information infrastructures to support data use, re-use, and preservation. Most respondents had formal science education and six had a master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences. Most of the knowledge, skills, and abilities for these workers were acquired through on-the-job experience, but future professionals in these careers may benefit from tailored education informed through job analyses.