INSPIRE: A Digital HPS Infrastructure for Understanding Biodiversity

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This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Science, Technology, and Society Program in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences; and by the Advances in Biological Informatics Program in the Division of Biological Infrastructure in the Directorate for Biological Sciences.Intellectual MeritThis will be the first large scale computational project in Science and Technology Studies. Although the focus of this project is on Biodiversity and on History and Philosophy of science, the approach would extend well beyond these areas. The project will establish a repository and a research system based on computational tools and digital sources, and it will develop education and training modules. The goal is to move beyond separate small collections that reside on individual computers in dispersed places, and bring together the objects of study as well as scholarly interpretations of those objects. The materials are to be openly available for efficiency and also to stimulate new kinds of research and discovery. The repository will link to existing large and widely-used databases such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Encyclopedia of Life. Researchers at Arizona State University and the Marine Biological Laboratory will collaborate in bringing together the robustly integrative methods that combine history and philosophy of science, informatics, and biology of biodiversity. It will transform the way that scholarship and training is done in the areas, and lead to a new kind of scientific history based in open access publishing. The repository, tools, and training modules will be widely available for other projects in Science and Technology Studies for the full range of STEM disciplines. Potential Broader ImpactsThis project will produce scholarly results, a repository, informatics tools, and training manuals for others to customize and contribute their own projects. Scholarly results are to be produces that would be available through different websites for multiple user groups, from specialized scholars to the wider public. For educators and students, the project will connect with Arizona State University's Ask A Biologist project, as well as to Encyclopedia of Life and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and to other existing databases. Undergraduate and Graduate students will be trained to contribute interpretive articles. Informatics Training courses, manuals, and other educational approaches will make the system and repository available widely.