JISC

The application of advanced ICT for research is opening up to investigation questions across all disciplines that just a few years ago would have been almost impossible to tackle, for example, in the fields of systems biology, climate change and even the study of humanities across cultures and languages.

JISC invests heavily in the technologies underpinning advanced ICT, such as fast networks, a national computing grid, data resources and virtual research environments. Despite the opportunities for leading edge and exciting research, however, many researchers are not making optimum use of advanced ICT and this underpinning e-infrastructure.

In 2006-2009, JISC funded the Community Engagement programme to find out why, recommend and (where possible) implement ways of encouraging greater uptake of advanced ICT for research. Three projects interviewed more than 100 researchers and intermediaries, such as research computing or IT services.

• The e-Uptake project documented the barriers and enablers to advanced ICT use and gathered information on training requirements and provision. eUptake also contributed to a series of roadshow events to introduce some of the concepts and tools for e-research. 
• The e-Infrastructure Use Cases and Service Usage Models (eIUS) project produced a series of non-technical use cases, some of which were made into videos, with the aim of raising awareness of the opportunities e-infrastructure offers the researcher 
• The Engage project conducted 14 small-scale development projects to make existing software more usable by inexperienced users on national and local e-infrastructures.

The aim of the Research Communities Engagement programme is to build on the findings and outputs from these earlier projects with the aim of developing initiatives to foster greater use of advanced ICT and the e-infrastructure by researchers across all disciplines.

The first phase of the programme in 2010 is conducting further studies to build on and refine the body of evidence so far. The second phase (2011 onwards) will use this evidence to pilot initiatives to support researchers and their institutions with the use of the e-infrastructure and advanced ICT for research.

Phase 1 (2010)

1. Review of Models of Advanced ICT Support for Researchers
   Engage and eUptake found that intermediaries between institutional research computing or IT services and researchers have a major impact on the successful development and adoption of advanced ICT for research. This strand is funding a project to review the models institutions adopt to support researchers in the use of advanced ICT for research
2. Roadshows
   A series of institutional roadshows demonstrating the use and relevance of Advanced ICT tools and services to researchers.
3. E-Uptake follow-on
   Improve accessibility to the eUptake database of findings and conduct further analysis to extract recommendations for action and implement them with relevant stakeholders.