Measuring sustainability of seed-funded earth science informatics projects

Publishing date: 2019-11-14

Published on: PLOS ONE

summary: Short term funding is a common funding model for informatics projects. Funders are interested in maximizing the sustainability and accessibility of the outputs, but there are no commonly accepted practices to do so in the Earth sciences informatics field. The authors constructed and applied a framework for sustainability drawing from other disciplines that have more published work focusing on sustainability of projects. This framework had seven sustainability influences, and three ways of defining sustainability. Using this framework, they evaluated outputs of projects funded by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Community for Data Integration and found that the various outputs are widely accessible, but not necessarily sustained or maintained. The authors conclude by summarizing lessons for individuals applying for short-term funding, and for organizations managing programs that provide such funding, for maximizing sustainability of project outcomes.

authors: Leslie Hsu, Vivian B. Hutchison, Madison L. Langseth

link to paper: 10.1371/journal.pone.0222807

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