Professionalization in Cyberinfrastructure

Abstract

In this report we address whether the cyberinfrastructure community should professionalize as it continues to encourage participation in cyberinfrastructure-related occupations, provide a career path, and continue to gain academic legitimacy. We brought members of the cyberinfrastructure community (high-performance computing, software, data, and infrastructure) together with organization scientists to discuss the professionalization of, and career paths for, emerging cyberinfrastructure roles. The cyberinfrastructure workforce is increasingly important to science, and this RCN will bring those interested in the cyberinfrastructure workforce together with scholars of technical workers and technical professions together. Among other contributions, we identified four general roles for cyberinfrastructure personnel: systems facing, software facing, researcher facing, and application facing.We discuss organization science research in professionalization and reflect on whether it makes sense to create a cyberinfrastructure profession at this stage.

Keywords: cyberinfrastructure, workforce, professionalization