Framework

In the years following the Civil War, the land grant universities transformed American higher education. After World War II, the GI Bill further propelled that transformation from an elitist educational system to one open to the public. The GI Bill itself created no institutions, nor did it mandate institutional behavior; but this direct means of distributing opportunity and resources dramatically expanded the number of people who considered college a possibility and prompted colleges and universities to see themselves as national, rather than local or regional, institutions. Established institutions that were responsive to the new opportunities, such as the University of California, flourished.

When the federal government began the direct support of advanced research, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health, and, later, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts adopted the extramural grant mechanisms pioneered by philanthropic foundations. They combined these mechanisms with the peer-review practices developed within universities to distribute research support on the basis of competitive applications. The competitive “market” for research support reinforced standards of scholarly excellence and relied on the research ambitions of individual scholars to motivate the institutional response of universities in developing their local research infrastructures.

The response of American higher education to the GI Bill, and the process developed by the federal government to fund advanced research, demonstrate that frameworks for action can challenge institutions to build upon existing capacities. This report suggests that cyberinfrastructure is another such framework for guiding decisions, allocating resources, and setting directions. Thinking about structures naturally requires also thinking about functions and their schematic relationship. That the NSF has already adopted cyberinfrastructure as such a framework underlines the need for strategic thinking. The cyberinfrastructure of the humanities and social sciences does not and will not exist independently of the larger academic infrastructure, where the sciences thus far have set priorities. Similarly, academic stakeholders must take account of the even larger social and commercial cyberinfrastructure that is, increasingly, the platform on which human creativity and social interaction—the subjects of the humanities and social sciences—is expressed and takes place.

There follows a framework for action. First, we present five necessary characteristics of a robust cyberinfrastructure in the humanities and social sciences. Second, we identify eight actions that must be undertaken to make that infrastructure possible.