Conference Agenda

This presentation will review the new Open Scholarship Open Source Environment API developed by the Center for Open Science as part of the Open Science Framework (OSF) platform and will discuss future development plans. It will also discuss the process for developing the requirements for the API with community members in order to support multiple functionalities. We will close by highlighting lessons learned from developing community-supported infrastructure for open scholarship. We believe the discussion will be a contribution to ongoing discussions of not only the actual infrastructure available for doing all types of scholarly research, but also the challenges and opportunities presented by community-developed software that integrates with and supports digital repositories.

Infra Finder is a new tool developed by Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI, investinopen.org) for advocates, decision-makers, and creators in the open infrastructure space. It is open-source and free to use. In its first release in January 2024, Infra Finder contains a standard set of information about 56 open infrastructure tools and services enabling the sharing of research data and publications that audiences can use to identify services, increase adoption, and foster development and investment in open infrastructure.

In this session, we will provide an overview of the development of Infra Finder, including both our survey of related tools and services in this space and the results from our interviews and focus groups that helped refine the information presented in the tool. We will demonstrate Infra Finder and the content and data repositories currently included in the tool, and detail how interested representatives of repository and other open infrastructure services can nominate their projects for inclusion.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital repositories, the challenge of managing costs and technical complexity often poses a significant barrier to entry, especially for smaller institutions and those in developing regions. This presentation explores an innovative approach to surmounting these challenges by leveraging cloud-native solutions, with a specific focus on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our organization’s journey in transitioning to a cloud-based infrastructure illustrates how cloud-native technologies can streamline repository management, enhance scalability, and significantly reduce operational costs.

Through a detailed case study, we will demonstrate the practical application of AWS services in optimizing data storage, ensuring high availability, and facilitating global access to digital content. Our experience sheds light on the nuances of integrating AWS into existing digital repository frameworks, highlighting both the successes and the challenges encountered.

Key discussion points will include the strategic selection of AWS services to meet specific repository needs, the cost-benefit analysis of cloud migration, and the long-term implications for repository sustainability. We will also delve into how our model promotes inclusivity by making digital repository infrastructure more accessible to a broader range of institutions.

We present a toolkit for sustainable archival repositories, with metadata and storage standards as well as APIs and data portals that can be assembled by communities with various levels of resourcing into repository solutions at a variety of scales, with fallback to offline operation. Tools are designed to work in low-resource environments allowing communities to have agency and control over their materials. We prioritize sustainability, simplicity, standardization, linked-data description and clear licensing over user interface features, in line with Suleman’s keynote presentation at OR2023, while still being able to drive rich, full-featured services when resources allow and fall back to a sustainable core if needed.

Much of the data we work with is subject to Indigenous Cultural Intellectual property (ICIP) rights, controlled by First Nations peoples guided by Indigenous data sovereignty principles; we must ensure it is handled in a conscionable and culturally responsible manner.

Making data Accessible does not always mean Open Access – under both research ethics and the CARE and FAIR principles, data by and about humans needs access control and licensing. Our framework deals with these issues and is built from the ground up to be “as open as possible, as closed as needed”.