In order to create more awareness about RIs’ important role, the European Commission started a series of conferences in Europe which rapidly extended into a global forum and audience.
Most of the RIs are unique in their nature. They offer cutting edge facilities and services to researchers from national institutes and universities to conduct their research and progress humanities knowledge of the world. Research infrastructures are complex organisations which require sound governance to ensure highest quality and sustainability of their services as well as contribute to new knowledge which benefits economic competitiveness and innovation.
The aim of the conference was not only to discuss and debate a great variety of issues, but to focus on certain pressing issues and move the debate towards concrete conclusions as well as propose ways forward to secure effectiveness and functionality of RIs. In order to do this, the conference was organised around 3 Plenary Sessions and 5 Parallel Sessions which all highlighted individual aspects of RIs. While the 3 Plenary Sessions focused on strategies, long-term visions, and the final conclusions, the 5 Parallel Sessions looked at specific issues in more detail: internationalisation, human resources, fostering of diversity and overcoming of inequality, enhancing societal value and data:
1.Internationalisation of RIs results in various challenges as realising the most value from investment in RIs often means making them available to the widest possible pool of excellent researchers, wherever they are based.
2. Human resources are key for RIs to offer unique services to the scientific community. They need to be highly skilled and flexible in order to meet emerging demands that go beyond purely scientific work and across disciplinary frontiers.
3. RIs are also key actors in the advancement of knowledge but there is a need to foster diversity and overcome inequality. Due to differences in size, financial capacity, human resources not all countries and communities can contribute to their development and take advantage of their use, equally.
4. RIs need methodologies and models to assess and enhance societal value as well as communicate it to various audiences and increase the involvement of citizens.
5. While there have been significant advances in making ever larger volumes of increasingly complex research data available to researchers, ensuring the quality and reliability of this data is a major challenge for RIs.
Based on the outcome of the 3 day conference, the following key Messages were elaborated:
A. Best use of RIs is essential across disciplines and countries. This requires frameworks for trans-national access and collaboration, data sharing, common and agreed skills sets, comparable work conditions and the right balance of cooperation and competition.
B. Societal impact of RIs is important and can be fostered by better understanding of the complexity of societal value through adequate assessment and communication. The regional dimension and impact of RIs has to be considered as much as the international dimension of RIs.
C. Understanding differences, building capacity and fostering diversity will benefit RIs and maximise scientific return for society. All capable researchers should have the opportunity to contribute to scientific excellence at RIs and suitable cross-border-financing mechanisms should be in place.
D. Trust in data and quality of data through the data life-cycle are key requirements. Implementing the FAIR principles depends on trusted e-infrastructure. A new workforce of data scientists’ and data stewards needs to be built to face to manage and exploit FAIR data.
E. Governance of RI is crucial and requires robust organisational structures and governance arrangements along common standards and common visions for the eco-system of RIs.
