Evaluating Emerging Knowledge Infrastructures: Learnings and Directions

This report provides insight into the Lorentz workshop Evaluating Emerging Knowledge Infrastructures held in April 2024 and funded by the Lorentz Center at Leiden University and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at the University of Amsterdam. The event built on and expanded work done in two previous Knowledge Infrastructure (KI) workshops, held in 2012  and 2020. Twenty-two KI scholars and practitioners came together in Leiden, the Netherlands, to discuss and plan research directions. They explored how KIs that seek to support innovative forms of knowledge production can be evaluated in ways that go beyond methods of comparison. The key questions with which the workshop participants engaged included:

●    What transitions are we seeing with regards to the core values of knowledge infrastructures?

●    What are the social values that drive evaluation of infrastructures?

●    Which implicit values (public/corporate) are embedded in knowledge infrastructures and how can they be identified

The program included presentations, case study discussions, a talk series at IAS, and brainstorming and collaborativewriting sessions. Across these activities, participants identified key themes and honed in on three focal areas for further development: KIs as part of enabling environments for citizen science; reconciling competing regimes of evaluation in knowledge infrastructures; and the sustainability of infrastructures as part of evaluation. The workshop also resulted in drafts and plans for three position papers to be followed by calls for special issues in relevant journals or book series in these three topical areas.