sciencesupporting

Sciencesupporting is a broad term used to describe the ecosystem of activities, roles, and infrastructures that enable scientific research but are not themselves the generation of new knowledge. It encompasses administrative, technical, legal, and social elements that support experimentation, analysis, and dissemination.

Its scope includes research infrastructure such as laboratories, high-performance computing facilities, and data repositories; services like grant administration, ethics compliance, and project management; software and tools including data standards, repositories, and workflow platforms; and human capital such as librarians, data stewards, research IT staff, and science communicators.

Purpose and impact: by providing reliable access to resources, maintaining data integrity, and facilitating collaboration, sciencesupporting aims to improve efficiency, reproducibility, and broader access to scientific results.

Examples: open data initiatives, research software engineering, library-led data curation, and funder policies on data management.

Challenges: fragmentation of funding, varying standards across disciplines, inequitable access, and measurement of impact.

Relation to other concepts: it interacts with science policy, research administration, and science communication, reflecting how support structures shape the practice and reach of science.

Notes: the term is used variably, and its boundaries differ by institution or field, leading to different interpretations of which activities qualify as sciencesupporting.