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Use it or lose it: A hybrid model for sustaining e-infrastructures
A case study from the ViBRANT project
Vincent S. SmithBiodiversity Informatics Group | Department of Life Sciences
Natural History Museum, London
Pro-iBiosphere final conferenceMeise, Brussels, June 12 2014
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Maintenance
Funding application
Project starts
Project ends
Development phase
No further funding or gap in funding for development
?
The ephemeral lifecycle of a project
TDWG lists 682 Biodiversity Information projects
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Project InfrastructureDiscoveryIndividualistic
EphemeralOptionalRisk taking
ImplementationCommunal / agreed
PersistentEssential
Robust & reliable
Adapted from Patterson D. 2013, Tempe, Arizona
Transition from
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“An infrastructure must be taken as a process instead of a system.”
Shift in the way we think of e-infrastructures and information resources
Stable/rigid system Dynamic/open process
Outsource to and involve the end user community
We need to set up the environment that will enable the community contribution
Koerten, H. & van den Besselaar P. 2013. Sustainable Taxonomic Infrastructures: System or Process?
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A network of compatible services with no single point of failure
So… how did ViBRANT go?
Low
Medium
High
Scratchpads
Platform for Cybertaxonomy
Biowikifarm
PWTNPT
OBOERefBank
GoldenGATE
Xper2GeoCAT CartoDB
ESTABLISHED USER BASE
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For your community to support youyou first have to build one
Confidence
Commitment Longevity
Agility
AdaptabilityUser monitoring
Marketing
VisibilityIntuitive interface
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ScratchpadsVirtual Research Environments
600 communities
7,100 active users
Institutional support
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Ambassadors programme
Share enthusiasm and vision Usage experience Geographically distributed and cross-domain
Crowdsourcing the support activities
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Crowdsourcing the support activities
On-line
3 online courses in 2013, 5 in 2014
Global reach
Low cost
Participants from all continents
Training
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Project management – Issues queue
Bug reports
Feature requests
Support queries
Redmine open source project management system
> 1,200 issues / year
Maximising support efficiency
61% processed within a day1
81% processed within a week1
1 Brake I. et al. 2011. Zookeys 150 doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2191
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Wiki based documentation site
DocumentationMaximising support efficiency
> 115,000 views
ca. 100 articles
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1 Embracing a commons philosophyAdopt CC0/CC-BY licences for all support and outreach material
Maximising support efficiency
2 Improve cost/benefit ratioAdopt open-source support software
3 Keep open communication channelsSustain intuitive communication tools
4 Study your end-user basePerform sociological studies
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Could a community support model on its own be the solution?
Could any our projects follow the Wikipedia business paradigm?
Conclusions
But…
Hybrid models will need to be applied
Commons +
No (not yet)…