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Abstract
This paper is a first attempt to describe and compare the adoption of e-Infrastructure across the UK, continental Europe, and the USA in the social sciences and humanities. A survey of early adopters identified three differences across these countries, each potentially affecting adoption: funding approaches, the technical configuration of projects, and research support. Our findings also suggest that the sustainable adoption of e-Infrastructure co-varies with the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the involvement of other people in the adoption decision.
Notes
Maybe with the Netherlands as an exception, where various e-research initiatives in the SSHs have been reported (Wouters & Beaulieu Citation2007).
The final report on AVROSS is available for download at http://web.fhnw.ch/plattformen/avross/papers-and-prensentations/final-report/ or can be obtained from the authors upon request.
Of course, because of the small cluster sizes, the results should not be taken as more than an initial attempt to identify some typical schemes of adoption.
For those who have stopped using e-Infrastructure, it is important to note that this analysis is only descriptive in nature. There are multiple problems with interpreting the results as inferential – not least the sampling frame and strategy, item non-response, the overlap between respondents and projects, different starting (and hence stopping) dates, and the inherently truncated nature of the distribution.