A Capacity Framework of Community Readiness for Supporting Big Data Science Projects during Cyberinfrastructure Diffusion

This study presents a capacity framework for measuring community readiness for supporting big data science projects during cyberinfrastructure (CI) diffusion. CI projects are academic big data science projects driven by data-intensive research efforts. CI projects are an interesting example of understanding big data science projects from a scientific and academic perspective. In this paper, we advanced the argument that in order for CI projects to succeed, they need to draw from five dimensions of community readiness. More specifically, we present a capacity framework of community readiness consisting of the five dimensions of national support networks, peer-to-peer support networks, CI opinion leaders, curriculum and training, and student workforce. We proposed composite scale items developed to quantitatively define and measure these five dimensions, which can be administered using a questionnaire. The overall average score and the composite scores of the five dimensions can be utilized as reflexive assessment and feedback for CI projects about the academic and professional community they belong to. Future research could statistically validate the framework via factor analyses.