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Minimum Viable Skills for Research Infrastructure Professionals

Research Infrastructure (RI) professionals contribute to open science development by being “operators who have experience and insights into scientific or technical issues whilst also being a professional manager”. RI professionals also play a specific role in coordinating and engaging the scientific community.

Associated functions titles:

  • Infrastructure manager,
  • Project manager,
  • Service manager,
  • Chief Technology Officer,
  • Data manager,
  • Data steward,
  • Researcher

Mission

The OS missions of RI professionals therefore entail: spreading a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and OS culture; managing the RI; providing, handling and maintaining services, resources, and tools; harmonizing and improving a common EU OS space; supporting and monitoring FAIRification; providing training, sharing best practices, and building a research community.

OS Activities

Service - Provide knowledge-related facilities and resources such as collections, archives or scientific data infrastructures; computing systems, communication networks, and any other infrastructure - Provide technological alignment, standards implementation - Provide guidance about FAIR principles and FAIR implementation - Ensure technical policy consistency throughout projects and activities of the RI

Support

  • Coordinate and engage the research community’s relevant stakeholders with a special attention to young generation
  • Set up and offer foundational and specialized digital skills training for scientific community, data professionals, ELSI experts, Data Protection Officers;
  • Facilitate in-person and online training and development of communities of practice
  • Support the application of RRI principles through the consideration of impact’s anticipation, inclusiveness and transparency dimensions of research
  • Instruct researchers on open licensing and open software according the legislation on the reuse of public funded research data

Coordination

  • Foster new partnerships and innovative services through internal and external collaboration
  • Share knowledge to address socio-economic challenges, and take care of users’ needs.
  • Position the RI in the local, national and international environment; identify regional research priorities and set consistent strategies
  • Identify and negotiate with potential funders; identify new funding tools (private-public partnerships, special projects, commercial funding, fee for service, consultancy)

OS Outcomes

The European Commission describes the main objectives of RIs and these represent OS outcomes provided by the RI professionals:

  • Generalize OS practices and reduce fragmentation of the research ecosystem
  • Avoid duplication of effort
  • Facilitate and support research outputs sharing
  • Produce open, usable and accessible research data and publications
  • Boost innovation and research projects
  • Facilitate cross-disciplinarity and cooperation with industry

Essential Skills and Competences

Technical skills and competences

  • Expertise and competence in RRI, OS and research governance, as well as diverse EU research policies and systems
  • Technical knowledge and skills needed for service development and provision, including data use agreements, information security and risk management
  • Expertise in innovation and business development
  • Staff management and project management skills
  • Ability to empower people to implement OS by establishing transparent, accountable and sustainable processes
  • Ability to plan and implement FAIR and open science principles and meet the requirements for reproducible research.
  • Ability to identify and meet scientific communities’ needs
  • Expertise in developing guidelines in multidisciplinary areas
  • Fostering a common vision among various stakeholders
  • Ability to understand ethical and legal implications of research: Intellectual property rights and non-personal data Management, Knowledge of the Ethical principles, frameworks and codes of conduct, Legal issues related to personal data governance, Responsible use of data-driven technologies
  • Ability to create, plan, coordinate public events, public in-formation pathways

Soft/ transversal skills

  • Networking in inclusive/pluralist/participatory environments
  • Community engagement expertise
  • Team building and teamwork
  • Leadership and coordination
  • Sharing knowledge and processes
  • Pedagogical skills
  • Analytical and research skills
  • Flexibility and adaptability
  • Proactiveness and responsiveness

Link to any other MVS that this MVS is based on (from those in Skills4EOSC D2.1)

Reference sources

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  1. Susanna Nykyri, Seliina Päällysaho, Tomi Rosti, Anne Sunikka, Anssi Neuvonen, and Mari Elisa Kuusniemi. Open research data and methods national policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021–2025: policy component 1: open access to research data. 2021. ↩

  2. Yuri Demchenko, Lennart Stoy, Claudia Engelhardt, and Vinciane Gaillard. D7.3 FAIR Competence Framework for Higher Education (Data Stewardship Professional Competence Framework). March 2021. Version Number: 1.0 DRAFT. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4562089, doi:10.5281/zenodo.4562089. ↩

  3. European Commission, Directorate-General for Research, Innovation, N Manola, E Lazzeri, M Barker, I Kuchma, V Gaillard, and L Stoy. Digital skills for FAIR and Open Science – Report from the EOSC Executive Board Skills and Training Working Group. Publications Office, 2021. doi:doi/10.2777/59065. ↩

  4. European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures.: Innovation Working Group. Innovation-oriented cooperation of research infrastructures. Università degli studi, Dipartimento di Fisica, 2018. ↩

  5. EC. European Research Infrastructures - European Commission. July 2018. URL: https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/our-digital-future/european-research-infrastructures_en (visited on 2024-03-16). ↩

  6. EOSC Glossary Interest Group. EOSC Glossary. January 2021. Version Number: December 2020. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4472643, doi:10.5281/zenodo.4472643. ↩

  7. OECD. Skills for a Digital World. 2016. URL: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/paper/5jlwz83z3wnw-en, doi:https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1787/5jlwz83z3wnw-en. ↩

  8. Dimitri Prandner and Philip Sinner. Identifying and Updating Training Needs in European Research Infrastructures and Core Facilities. January 2023. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7542429, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7542429. ↩

  9. Competency Profile - RItrain. URL: http://ritrain.eu/competency-profile (visited on 2024-03-16). ↩

  10. Università Milano Bicocca. Executive Masters in Management of Research Infrastructures. URL: https://emmri.unimib.it/programme-content/ (visited on 2024-03-16). ↩

  11. Stefaan G. Verhulst. Wanted: Data Stewards — Drafting the Job Specs for A Re-imagined Data Stewardship Role. March 2023. URL: https://medium.com/data-stewards-network/wanted-data-stewards-drafting-the-job-specs-for-a-re-imagined-data-stewardship-role-f7cd28a83379 (visited on 2024-03-16). ↩

  12. Lorna Wildgaard, Evgenios Vlachos, Lars Nondal, Asger Væring Larsen, and Michael Svendsen. National Coordination of Data Steward Education in Denmark: Final report to the National Forum for Research Data Management (DM Forum). February 2020. Version Number: 1. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3609516, doi:10.5281/zenodo.3609516. ↩