Equality of Access / Equity in Design:Rethinking Open Science Infrastructures

The 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science underscored the global commitment to Open Science. The declaration defines Open Science through the values of inclusivity and equity and the principle of sustainability. This commitment to equity hinges on a key implicit assumption, namely that diverse stakeholders around the world will be able to add value to their lives by accessing and applying the resources made available through Open Science infrastructures and practices. Despite these strong commitments, engagement around what equitable access to open resources looks like in practice is low. Lessons from development studies and ICT4D illustrate the limitations of framings such as online/offline, or the “digital divide”. Being able to meaningfully utilise available online resources is influenced by a range of other technical, infrastructural, cultural and geo-political factors. In this talk I will present our research on infrastructural equity. Using computational methods we have tested access to open infrastructures from different locations around the world. Our data illustrates a highly heterogeneous landscape of accessibility of open resources that links to the design decisions inherent in these infrastructures and the contexts in which they are trying to be used. I would like these data to initiate a community discussion on how to integrate equity-driven thinking into the design, deployment and support of open science infrastructures. How can we ensure that infrastructures are not geo-blocked to specific countries? How can we support use of infrastructures in low-bandwidth settings? How can we enable engagement with infrastructures through diverse ICT devices? In short, how can we ensure that the equal access to open resources is supported by equity in infrastructure design?