Research Information Management in Italy. The IRIS Platformised Infrastructure as a Sociotechnical Device

In an era of data deluge, the aggregation, curation, and utilisation of (meta) data about research is increasingly mediated by digital Research Information Management Systems (RIMSs). The aim of the contribution is to describe the effects of IRIS on the sphere of academia and explore the ‘invisible work’ it does through technical and social means on the fields of research and management. IRIS is examined as a platformised infrastructure and a sociotechnical device. On the one hand, IRIS exerts its technical agency by intra- and inter-connecting HE institutions, infrastructures and platforms through its internal and external interoperability capabilities. A digital ecological space of academia thus emerges – a space of standardisation which holds together the fields of research and its management. On the other, IRIS socially acts by conveying and naturalising ideas about what researchers and research should look like. Such ideas translate New Public Management logics of entrepreneurialisation and commensurative measurement. Thus, RIMSs cannot be considered as neutral and extra-social tools, as they orient practices and shape social arrangements. Methodologically, an ‘infrastructure inversion’ has been carried out through trace and digital ethnography, documentary analysis, interviews.