The UCLA Center for Knowledge Infrastructures is directed by Christine L. Borgman, Distinguished Research Professor and Presidential Chair Emerita. We conduct research on knowledge infrastructure topics such as scientific data practices and policy, scholarly communication, and open science. We also mentor students, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting scholars in these areas.

Beginning in the latter 1990s, with funding from the National Science Foundation’s Digital Libraries Initiative, and other sources, teams led by Prof. Borgman conducted collaborative research on social, technical, and policy aspects of information systems. These teams eventually were formalized under the rubric of the Center for Knowledge Infrastructures, with offices in the UCLA Department of Information Studies. From 2002-2013, our team was based in the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center based at UCLA, led by Deborah Estrin. Concurrently, from 2008-2011, our team was part of the NSF-funded Monitoring, Modeling, and Memory Project led by Paul N. Edwards at the University of Michigan. NSF funding for CENSNet: An Architecture for Authentic Web-Based Science Inquiry, led by William Sandoval of UCLA, also supported the team from 2004 to 2008. Other NSF and Microsoft funding supported projects to the team through 2014. From 2015 through 2020, the Center received substantial funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Our Sloan-funded projects culminated with the Second Workshop on Knowledge Infrastructures, held at UCLA in late February, 2020. Due to the constraints on research activity imposed by the pandemic from March, 2020 onwards, the Center is currently operating at a reduced level, focused on continuing collaborations in knowledge infrastructures, astronomy, biomedicine, data practices, and privacy. Publications and dissertations through 2021 resulting from funding to the Center are listed on this site. Publications from subsequent collaborations not specifically part of the CKI are listed on Prof. Borgman’s primary website.