 The domusBITae initiative has being promoted since the end of 2009 aiming to underpin the interdisciplinarity in the information studies as a means to bridge between different and distant disciplines and research communities. Broadening its scope it has evolved into the promotion of interdisciplinarity in research and education based upon open innovation and system thinking, though always holding the information studies as an specific area of interest. The initiative has been supported by a network of different organisations who has enabled the progressive development of its objectives, as well as the constitution of several consortia for the participation in different international support programmes. The two main areas in which the initiative has evolved concerns: (1) the development of a virtual research and education center for interdisciplinary studies; (2) the development of general interdisciplinary studies.The initiative is aimed at fostering the interdisciplinarity in information studies by means of building a virtual research and educational center as a global house (domus) for information studies (symbolically represented by the unit of information, BIT). Since there are for information relevant grounds concerning formal-, physical-, chemical-, biological-, cognitive-, social-, technological-, ethical- and philosophical sciences, the traditional gaps and boundaries between sciences must be overcome in order to achieve an actual overarching understanding of information, which might be necessary to cope with the global challenges of our information society. System thinking, on the one hand, and open innovation, on the other, offers a solid ground for underpinning interdisciplinarity not only in information studies, but in many others areas related to current societal and scientific challenges, as social and environmental sustainability, building social responsibility, understanding mind, understanding natural complexity, etc. The domusBITae circle is constituted by a network of organisations, a coordination team and an Science Advisory Board (representative of the Scientific Community). The latter should bridge the technical development and the scientific usability in order to address the actual needs of the different domains, selecting best practises for the effectiveness of scientific and technical research, collaborative work and education.
The proposed infrastructure is based on an integration of resources as explained in the section domusBITae proposal.
Financial Support Potentiality (open programmes) Several European supporting research programmes might converge with the aims of the proposed initiative regarding: 1) the promotion of interdisciplinary education (LLP-Erasmus); 2) the promotion of interdisciplinary research (FP7, FET, ESF); 3) the promotion of an inclusive, trustworthy, safety, democratic and citizen-friendly Information Society (e.g. several themes of FP7, PSP-ICT); 4) the effectiveness in the use of research infrastructures and the improvement in their capacities (FP7-Infrastructures). The following programmes have been identified as suited for supporting the initiative (see page Open/submitted proposals for more detailed information):
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