20 February 2023
Hosted at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) between 7-9th February, DiSSCo Futures was a fantastic opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the DiSSCo-linked projects and to look ahead to all the new challenges that wait for us in the next year.
The year 2023 will be a crucial one for DiSSCo. As the three crucial projects – Synthesys+, Mobilise and DiSSCo Prepare– that have been supporting DiSSCo’s endeavour come to an end, DiSSCo enters a new, transitional phase that will only end once it successfully becomes an European Research Infrastructure Consortium. Fundamental changes will occur along the way to the ERIC, and they will shape the way how DiSSCo operates and gets funded, and also its technical and scientific scope. It was time to reflect about the past and the future of DiSSCo, and DiSSCo Futures was the ideal scenario for it.
DiSSCo Futures brought to Brussels more than 200 participants from over 25 countries for an impressive series of 68 talks that covered every single aspect of DiSSCo, from technical topics such as digitisation, virtual access or data standards to organisational matters such as capacity building or governance. A multidimensional portrait of where we are and where we want to go next.
The future of Natural History collections
DiSSCo envisages a landscape of future scientific research as one where increasingly digitised Natural History collections provide physical and virtual access to interlinked collection data and end-user services for enhanced data analysis and interpretation. DiSSCo Futures’ six-section structure reflected the interest of the DiSSCo community to focus the event on discussing our common vision of that future research landscape.
Below is a handful of some of the most interesting topics that we discussed during the sessions but you can access the session-by-session programme of DiSSCo Futures in the button below.
Digitisation on demand vs. Digitisation for broad discovery
One particular question was nearly ever-present during the initial sessions of DiSSCo Futures (those focues on Digitisation and Virtual Access), namely the dichotomy between Digitisation on demand and Digitisation for broad discovery. Do collection-holding institutions need to choose? Is it rather a question of finding the right balance? Digitisation processes are considerably different depending on whether the institution prioritises one or the other approach, and the choice may alter significantly the institutions operation.
It is generally accepted that digitisation on demand -which, among other things, involves availability and quality checks- is more costly and generally more time consuming. On the other hand, some voices argue that responding to the users’ actual demand for digitisation arguably provides a better chance for our collections to be fit for purpose.
Ultimately, digitisation is not only looking at the future of our collections but, in the words of Sandy Knapp, convener for the virtual access session “is about looking behind us (…) at all those things that are sitting in our collections. We need to think about digitisation and virtual access will inform how we collect in the future”.
Physical access to collections will remain crucial
Physical access to collections will remain crucial for biodiversity research. At the very least, DiSSCo Futures’ session on Physical Access made clear the benefits that transnational access has for users, host institutions and the community at large. Provided that funding is available for Research Infrastructure networks, transnational access to collections will continue equipping users and institutions with new skills, techniques and workflows, and will continue creating new possibilities for knowledge sharing and collaborations, which ultimately will transform into fast-tracked progress in global research issues in a variety of areas, thus benefitting the wider community.
Interestingly enough, our experience in Synthesys+ tells us that, far from reducing the number of physical visits and loans, digitisation of natural history collections actually results in more demands for physical visits. Surely, it is time to start thinking about a new model of access that finds the right balance between the digital and the physical components.
Digital infrastructure: a technical but also social approach is needed
Even though the word “Digital” is on the title and much of the conversation dealt with crucial concepts such as machine actionability or artificial intelligence, something caught the eye during the Digital Infrastructure session, namely the realization that one of the most important challenges for DiSSCo will be the complex socio-technical approach that it will require to be effective. Paraphrasing Sharif Islam, convener of the Digital Infrastructure session: it takes a village to create something like DiSSCo.
Some of the presentations in the session pointed at how beyond best practices and standards, there is a marked social component to how research is done, and that diversity somehow reflects the way we use data and services. Local practices and institutional “cultures” are also interesting elements that have specific ways in research practice and connect with social diversity. It is therefore important to consider the social dimension of DiSSCo and how the technical side of things – and particularly the FAIR Digital Object approach – can help align all that diversity.
Standards: very much worth the effort
International data standards have proved their potential for accelerating research, future-proving scientific output, supporting innovation, and saving precious money and time. DiSSCo Futures has consistently worked as a reminder of how all the time and effort invested in developing and maintaining these standards really pay off and should be prioritised. Connecting data and people together for better research is at the core of DiSSCo’s endeavour, little wonder then that data standards such as MIDS (Minimum Information for Digitial Specimen), Latimer Core or IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) will lay at the foundations of the future Research Infrastructure.
DiSSCo RI will have a huge impact
DiSSCo’s expected footprint on the scientific, social, political and economic layers took a considerable portion of the session devoted to Organisational and Human Capacity session. Just check this number: the return for DiSSCo RI once it is fully operational is expected to be between 7 and 10 times the investment made.
Three projects. One path to the future
DiSSCo Futures celebrated the success and the hard work undertaken in the three projects that have fed DiSSCo’s endeavour in recent years: DiSSCo Prepare, Synthesys+ and Mobilise, all of them now at the end of their cycle. The projects will not just end, however. If anything, they will inform DiSSCo’s future, because it it is thanks to DiSSCo Prepare, Synthesys+ and Mobilise that DiSSCo has reached the necessary level of maturity to face the transitional period that is ahead.
Progress in the data domain such as the Extended Digital Specimen or the OpenDS and MIDS standards; in technology developments such as the FAIR Digital Objects architecture or the catalogue of DiSSCo services; and in other relevant financial and governance-related aspects of DiSSCo prove that the future Research Infrastructure is well-equipped for the future.
A summary of all the three projects’ outputs, as well as a compendium of objectives and recommendations that conform the roadmap for DiSSCo’s next steps are contained in DiSSCo’s Construction Master Plan, arguably the most crucial DiSSCo output to date and the one that will point the way for DiSSCo to become a Research Infrastructure.
