Abstract
New approaches to research, which we might call “non-establishment” research, are frequently conducted outside of typical research institutions that provide infrastructure such as funding, training, and oversight. This poses a variety of challenges to the success of non-establishment research. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a chance to observe, through digital ethnography, how these challenges arose and were navigated in a do-it-yourself (DIY) Bio project by Just One Giant Lab (JOGL) called the “OpenCOVID19 Initiative.” Our results demonstrate that a lack of infrastructure elements—including funding, time, experience and expertise, and organizational structures—impeded progress, but that non-establishment research can create its own infrastructure, designed with its own interests, goals, and priorities in mind. Our research revealed early glimpses of what this could look like and suggests ways to advance in this direction in the future.