CLARIN Centers for a Sustainable Infrastructure

Daan Broeder, MPI for Psycholinguistics

Jan Odijk, Utrecht University

Content

The Problem: Stable Services in a Dynamic World CLARIN foundations: we have a center based

solution CLARIN Centers, how is that working out? Adjustments required? Recommendations

CLARIN centers

From the start centers played an important role in the services infrastructure architecture planning

“a backbone of CLARIN centers”

is a phrase that is often found in the early documents.

Fundamental: many centers are sharing responsibility

Strategy: Explicit responsibility for services Explicit contact point

Centers can gain exposure: Explicit acknowledgement after assessment of:

Organizational aspects (DSA) Technical competence (services)

Center variety

Originally CLARIN centers are mainly research institutes, and university departments

… many differences both in research focus and size The first national projects were CLARIN-D and NL with

ample means and many candidate centers … some competition was not thought as evil In some other disciplines a single or a few centers are

dominant in research infrastructures Which depending on their funding situation can make the

infrastructure very vulnerable However “single/few center infrastructure” is a valid approach

Center Taxonomy

KRC E

AAIservice

PIDservice

Center Registry

A

VLO

ISOCatVCregistry

CMDIRegistry

Assessment

B

DSA

PIDsFIM CMDI

L

Center infra evolution

Newer national CLARIN projects often have one single CLARIN center that is supported by several partners and serves the whole community Consequence of smaller budget (compared with NL and D) … or a smart way to save money? One CLARIN center costs less and can represent many

interests or organizations However, is this stable?

‘New’ trend: inclusion of broad data centers, libraries, … Libraries participating in the core (No)

… or still in the periphery (NL)

CLARIN Services sustainability

CLARIN services are not the core business for research institutes (and certainly not of general data centers) Usually funded from the national project … vulnerable for funding changes Offering services and data should be seen as a important

and funded from beyond CLARIN … or better: services should be anchored in an institute’s own

workflow

Nevertheless all may fail So centers should accept take over services from others Essential services can be doubled

How vulnerable are we?

Center downscaling MPI has reconsidered its project strategy A-services must be relocated Loss of expert staff

Funding gaps Research strategy changes

We need an Elastic Infrastructure

What does that mean in a European context? No dependence on a single national project Certainly not dependent on one or a few centers Coordinating parties are able to compensate for shrinking or

disappearing centers By:

Enable moving services to other centers (and test this) Doubling of essential A-services Enable easy outsourcing of services to compute (E-)centers Fund software maintainers & developers and reserve

adequate resources on national & EU level Flag requirements to national & EU funders

Still need stable lynch-pins I

Assumption of long-term well funded stable research-institutes is perhaps not tenable

What is well-funded, stable and sustainable? New developments as general data-centers, e-science

organizations, EU data management infra projects etc. Problems: too general approaches, motivation Service specificity can be (partly) solved by

Careful integration of the specific with the general by modular policy based services. Will need some extra (shared) costs

Would mean CLARIN as a front-office for a general service provider

Still need stable lynch-pins II

libraries and national archives are attractive partners These are obviously also getting their share of the national budgets Nobody questions their sustainability

Problems: motivation, (old fashioned) practices, too general approaches. Motivation will be solved e.g. libraries need to reposition themselves

Results vary per country countries, but in some libraries are already a core part of CLARIN national projects

Can expect the need for libraries to reposition will lead to useful modern data management practices

Service specificity could be (partly) solved by CLARIN (and others) collaborating and even partly integrating with them

Summing up to ‘Easy’ Recommendations

A CLARIN center should: make providing (CLARIN compatible) services and data part

of its mission use those also for the center’s own research workflow

A-services must be built from the start with easy relocation in mind (and this should be tested)

Reserve adequate resources for outsourcing of services and funding of service development

Include broader multi-disciplinary institutes & service providers and see how to integrate with them Starting with libraries and data centers & DM projects Develop models in collaboration for building discipline specific

services on top of general ones

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION