The Open Road: How To Build a Sustainable Open Infrastructure System

The open infrastructure ecosystem spans open source software and standards, and is a shifting constellation of individuals, organisations and private and public bodies. Working with Omidyar Networks, this report sets out how governments, civil society and philanthropic organisations can build sustainability in the open infrastructure ecosystem.Over the past decades, open source and open standards have emerged as the de facto way digital technologies are created. From individual developers building a profile and skills to interoperability between multi-billion dollar companies, open source software and open standards are universal technological forces.Despite this economic and industrial reliance on open infrastructure, the ecosystem as a whole faces a sustainability crisis. There is a major gap in funding, a gap felt most acutely at the foundations and by open source communities outside the digital limelight. For some developers, upskilling, economic security and a love for coding covers the costs of participation, but for many potential participants the barriers remain high. This includes non-code participants in an ecosystem where legal, management, governance and communications skills are in short supply. Where funding is available there remain gaps in tooling, governance and skills for OS communities to manage the money they receive and the responsibilities that come with it.But money isn't everything. We need to defend the open infrastructure ecosystem from state and corporate capture, inadvertent or otherwise. We need to support its maintenance. We need to incentivise participation from a diverse group of participants. And we need to talk about why this all matters to a non-technical audience, be they corporate budget holders or government decision makers. These priorities should inform philanthropic decision-making

Online forums support palliative and bereavement care: machine learning and natural language processing analysis of qualitative data from the internet

Palliative public health policy emphasises the value of sustainable community-led palliative care and psychosocial support. However, there are significant challenges to adequate palliative and bereavement care provision including precarious funding, inconsistent availability, and recent challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Minority groups and those at the greatest socioeconomic disadvantage are among those least likely to receive the care they need. Digital services may circumvent these challenges, allowing people to self-manage their needs. This research aimed to investigate how community-led online forums are used to support people facing life-limiting illness, their caregivers, and bereaved peopl

Shifts in the smart research agenda? 100 priority questions to accelerate sustainable energy futures

Energy transitions are at the top of global agendas in response to the growing challenges of climate change and international conflict, with the EU positioning itself as playing a pivotal role in addressing climate risks and sustainability imperatives. European energy transition policies identify 'smart consumption' as a key element of these efforts, which have previously been explored from a predominantly technical perspective thus often failing to identify or address fundamental interlinkages with social systems and consequences. This paper aims to contribute to interdisciplinary energy research by analysing a forward looking 'Horizon Scan' research agenda for smart consumption, driven by the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). Reflecting on an extensive systematic Delphi Method exercise surveying over 70 SSH scholars from various institutional settings across Europe, we highlight what SSH scholars see as future directions for smart consumption research. Building from seven thematic areas (under which are grouped 100 SSH research questions), the study identifies three key 'shifts' this new smart research agenda represents, when compared to previous agendas: (1) From technological inevitability to political choice, highlighting the need for a wider political critique, with the potential to open up discussions of the instrumentalisation of smart research; (2) From narrow representation to diverse inclusion, moving beyond the shortcomings of current discourses for engaging marginalised communities; and (3) From individual consumers to interconnected citizens, reframing smart consumption to offer a broader model of social change and governance. Social Sciences and Humanities scholarship is essential to address these shifts in meaningful (rather than tokenistic) ways. This agenda and the shifts it embodies represent key tools to enable better interdisciplinary working between SSH and teams from the technical and natural sciences.Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic DKRVO, (RP/CPS/2022/005); Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, H2020; European Commission, EC; Horizon 2020, (826025)European Union [826025]; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic DKRVO [RP/CPS/2022/005

Shifts in the smart research agenda? 100 priority questions to accelerate sustainable energy futures

Energy transitions are at the top of global agendas in response to the growing challenges of climate change and international conflict, with the EU positioning itself as playing a pivotal role in addressing climate risks and sustainability imperatives. European energy transition policies identify ‘smart consumption’ as a key element of these efforts, which have previously been explored from a predominantly technical perspective thus often failing to identify or address fundamental interlinkages with social systems and consequences. This paper aims to contribute to interdisciplinary energy research by analysing a forward looking ‘Horizon Scan’ research agenda for smart consumption, driven by the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). Reflecting on an extensive systematic Delphi Method exercise surveying over 70 SSH scholars from various institutional settings across Europe, we highlight what SSH scholars see as future directions for smart consumption research. Building from seven thematic areas (under which are grouped 100 SSH research questions), the study identifies three key ‘shifts’ this new smart research agenda represents, when compared to previous agendas: (1) From technological inevitability to political choice, highlighting the need for a wider political critique, with the potential to open up discussions of the instrumentalisation of smart research; (2) From narrow representation to diverse inclusion, moving beyond the shortcomings of current discourses for engaging marginalised communities; and (3) From individual consumers to interconnected citizens, reframing smart consumption to offer a broader model of social change and governance. Social Sciences and Humanities scholarship is essential to address these shifts in meaningful (rather than tokenistic) ways. This agenda and the shifts it embodies represent key tools to enable better interdisciplinary working between SSH and teams from the technical and natural sciences

Resisting the (re-)medicalisation of dying and grief in the post-digital age : Natural language processing and qualitative analysis of data from internet support forums

In the mid-twentieth century, the social movement of death revivalism sought to resist the medicalisation of dying and grief through promotion of the dying person retaining autonomy, and societal openness toward death and bereavement. Despite this advocacy, present-day dying in high income countries is largely institutionalised, with value placed on control over the body and emotions. These phenomena are at odds with the ambitions of death revivalism, and demonstrate the re-medicalisation of dying and grief. Furthermore, contemporary society is continually advancing into the post-digital age, reflected in digital technologies being a tacit part of human existence. Within this framework, this study aims to investigate how people living with life-limiting illness and their loved ones experience, negotiate, and resist medicalisation of dying and grief through online internet forums. We collected posts through web-scraping and utilised Natural Language Processing techniques to select 7048 forum posts from 2003 to 2020, and initially categorise data, before utilising Inductive Thematic Analysis, which generated two major themes. The theme of ‘Comfort’ describes online forums facilitating psychosocial support which was often used to compensate for systemic deficiencies, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Common sources of comfort included animal companions and spirituality, in stark contrast with the medicalised model. The theme of ‘Capability’ describes online forums acting as solutions for people facing disempowering care systems, including providing information on legal rights and benefits which may not be otherwise easily available, and facilitating collective advocacy. Our findings indicate that community-led online forums can play an effective and sustainable role in democratising care and retaining agency when facing life-limiting illness and grief. Future palliative and bereavement care research must focus on how online forums can be integrated into existing systems, made transparent and accessible, be adequately funded and structured, and be optimised, including compensating for service disruption encountered during future pandemics