Abstract (eng)
The increasing datafication of research has restructured working procedures in many scientific fields and continues to reorganize the social, temporal, and spatial aspects of research. Over the last decades, research institutions around the globe have started to rearrange their working procedures with respect to the production, processing and sharing of data. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in particular, has invested in the development of unique infrastructures for data processing. This rapid implementation of digital technologies ushered in a new era of sociotechnical organization at CERN and crucially restructured the ways in which researchers structure their working procedures. In order to unfold the ways in which research organization is enacted by data practices at CERN, I will follow the movement of data through and beyond the organization. By investigating the ways in which data is made mobile, the structures necessary to facilitate these data flows gain visibility. This thesis will specifically focus on how data moves from the CERN open data portal (ODP) to diverse locations of research. The foundation of the CERN ODP in 2014 marked a crucial step in CERN’s open data strategy. It was fueled by the ambition to make data available to a diverse set of communities. As of 2022, the portal offers more than two petabytes of data and enables educational as well as research-oriented endeavors. Investigating the dynamics around the development and use of the CERN ODP will allow insights into how data practices can facilitate, shape, and direct research organization across a multiplicity of spatial, temporal, and sociotechnical boundaries.