Fostering the Human Infrastructure of e-Research

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.