Fostering the human infrastructure of e-research

Abstract

Findings from an in-depth study of problems faced by the UK e-Research community – researchers, institutionally based support services and national e-Infrastructure service providers – as they struggle with the challenges of widening the adoption of e-Infrastructure, exploiting its potential benefits and embedding it into everyday research practices are presented. The findings show that e-Infrastructure is often seen by users (both current and potential) as complex and challenging. It is also clear that current users often experience frustrations, while potential users may be unaware of its benefits and of how to take the first steps towards exploiting them. The findings highlight the scale of problems arising from the failure of the human infrastructure – the networks (both formal and informal) of actors essential to effective exploitation of innovations – to develop and keep pace with the technical infrastructure. The article concludes by discussing a number of interventions that the e-Research community might make in order to re-align the capabilities of the human infrastructure with those of the technical infrastructure.

Keywords:

• e-Infrastructure
• e-Research
• human infrastructure
• embedding
• organizations
• technology supply

Acknowledgements

The e-Uptake project was funded by the UK's JISC. We would also like to thank all those who have given generously of their time to take part in the interviews as well as to contribute to subsequent discussions.

Notes

Also known as ‘cyberinfrastructure’, especially in the United States.

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ourportfolio/themes/researchinfrastructure/subthemes/einfrastructure/escience/Pages/default.aspx

For an example of e-Infrastructure investment in the social sciences, see Halfpenny, P., Procter, R., Lin, Y. & Voss, A. (2009). ‘Developing the UK e-Social Science Research Programme’, in e-Research, Transformation in Scholarly Practice, ed N. Jankowski, Routledge.

https://www.xsede.org/tg-archives

https://www.xsede.org

JISC is funded by UK Higher Education and Further Education funding bodies ‘to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research’. See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

Research Assessment Exercise. This is a periodic measurement of ‘quality profiles’ of UK academic institutions. The last RAE took place in 2008. See http://www.rae.ac.uk/

See footnote 6.

http://www.engage.ac.uk/

http://researchconnect.org/ci

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rob Procter

Rob Procter is Professor and Director, Manchester eResearch Centre, University of Manchester. His research interests cover socio-technical issues in the appropriation of ICT-based innovation, with a particular emphasis on computer-supported cooperative work and participatory design. His research has focused most recently on the application of new digital technologies in research and scholarly communications. He is co-editor of a forthcoming book for Sage on innovations in digital research methods.

Alex Voss

Alex Voss is a Lecturer in Software Engineering at the University of St Andrews. He is interested in the use of modern distributed compute infrastructures such as compute grids and cloud computing services and their uses in areas of academic research as well as in data journalism.

Marzieh Asgari-Targhi

Marzieh Asgari-Targhi is a Philosopher with a PhD in Cognitive and Computing Sciences. She is interested in reasoning and learning. In the past few years she has worked on the uptake of new computational methods in the sciences and the social sciences in particular. She is a visiting fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews.