According to the definition by the European Commission RI means “facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct research in their respective fields and covers scientific equipment or sets of instruments, knowledge based resources such as collections, archives or structured scientific information, enabling information and communication technology-based infrastructures such as grid, computing, software and communication, or any other entity of a unique nature essential to conduct research.” Consequently, RI are implemented along different organisational models, including central sources and laboratories, geographically distributed observatories or laboratories, remotely accessible resources and physical sample repositories, surveys, and longitudinal studies.
A common classification is to separate single sited and distributed RIs. This distinction is made for national as well as international RIs. The single sited RIs, i.e., facilities that have one specific location, typically have relatively high investment and operating costs and some of them would never have been built without joint national or international efforts. Distributed RIs are organised as several separate entities, jointly managed by the participating national or international partners. The main advantage with joining RIs in this way lies in the data sharing and complementarity in the equipment or the sites where the equipment is placed.
A useful reference to an effective national RI portfolio management system and the factors that RI managers should consider is presented in a report by OECD and Science Europe.[4] The report contains some guiding principles for effective national RI portfolio management system and factors that should be considered to optimising the user base of national RIs. Some of these guidelines are also applicable to the Nordic RI collaboration, for instance (for details, see the full report):
- “A management process that considers the whole portfolio of new and existing RIs together”
- “The stimulation of international networking for national RIs, and embedding international RI options alongside national RI options to find the best solutions to deliver the research requirements of the national community”
- “Appropriate means to monitor the performance of national and international RIs”
- “The provision and communication of clear and transparent mechanisms for accessing RIs, and consideration of how to extend access to new users/communities.”
- “The promotion of data sharing by RI users and the establishment of appropriate mechanisms to monitor the secondary use of data generated or managed by RIs.”
It should be stressed that the user’s perspective always has to be a top priority concerning RI-operations and that user communities have a very important role in this respect. In the case of distributed RIs, the users are very often closely involved in, if not identical to, the RI management. In the case of large single sited facilities there is, for obvious reasons, a clearer separation between the users and the management level. To fully account for the user’s perspective it is important that the users form organised communities that have close connections to the RI management. Collaboration between researchers from the Nordic countries can play a role in this context.