Barjak, Franz
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Case Studies of e-Infrastructure Adoption
This article reports results from a study of e-Infrastructure adoption in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The authors find that bridging barriers between computer and domain scientists is of key importance. In particular, SSH communities have to be accepted as being distinct and not suited to a ‘‘one size fits all’’ strategy of e-Infrastructure diffusion. Sustainability was also a core issue, whereas barriers to resource sharing could mostly be resolved with technological solutions, and skills and training activities are a reflection of the general ‘‘user dilemma.’’ The authors’ recommendations to European Union (EU) policy makers point the way to promoting e-Infrastructure development and wider application in the SSH.
A statistical analysis of the web presences of European life sciences research teams
Web links have been used for around ten years to explore the online impact of academic information and information producers. Nevertheless, few studies have attempted to relate link counts to relevant offline attributes of the owners of the targeted Web sites, with the exception of research productivity. This article reports the results of a study to relate site inlink counts to relevant owner characteristics for over 400 European life-science research group Web sites. The analysis confirmed that research-group size and Web-presence size were important for attracting Web links, although research productivity was not. Little evidence was found for significant influence of any of an array of factors, including research-group leader gender and industry connections. In addition, the choice of search engine for link data created a surprising international difference in the results, with Google perhaps giving unreliable results. Overall, the data collection, statistical analysis and results interpretation were all complex and it seems that we still need to know more about search engines, hyperlinks, and their function in science before we can draw conclusions on their usefulness and role in the canon of science and technology indicators.
e-Infrastructure adoption in the social sciences and humanities: cross-national evidence
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.
International collaboration, mobility and team diversity in the life sciences: impact on research performance.
The combination of knowledge and skills from different backgrounds or research cultures is often considered good for science. This paper describes the extent to which academic research teams in the life sciences draw on different national knowledge pools and how this is related to their research performance. We distinguish between international collaboration between research teams and international mobility leading to team diversity, where scientists with a background in another country work as members of a team over time. Our findings confirm previous results on the positive relationship between international collaboration and team performance. Moreover, we show that the most successful teams have a moderate level of diversity: maximizing diversity does not maximize performance. These results have implications for research team management and for research policy, in particular pointing out a need for adequate integration support to mobile scientists.
The Future of e-Research Infrastructures
In this paper, we present selected results of a systematic study of different types of e-Research infrastructures. The paper is based on ongoing research to compare a range of e-Infrastructures of broad diversity focusing on: geographical diversity, representing efforts from around the globe; disciplinary diversity, including the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities; organizational diversity, for example, multi-institutional or federated; diverse levels of maturity, from those in the planning stage to those with a well-established user base; and diverse types of target user communities such as specialized niche, discipline-wide, or generic infrastructures. In presenting six initial cases, we discuss some general features that distinguish between different types of infrastructures across different fields of research. Previous analyses of e-Infrastructures have focused on the parallels between these infrastructures and the major infrastructures in society that support national populations. What our cases highlight instead is that e-Infrastructures consist of multiple types of overlapping and intersecting socio-technical configurations that serve quite diverse needs and groups of users. Indeed, the very term ‘infrastructures’ may be misleading insofar as it connotes support of whole communities of researchers on a large scale, which is currently still premature. The paper derives implications of this heterogeneity for the future outlook on e-Infrastructures.
Case Studies of e-Infrastructure Adoption
We report results from a study of e-Infrastructure adoption in the social sciences and humanities. We find that bridging barriers between computer and domain scientists is of key importance. In particular, SSH communities have to be accepted as being distinct and not suited to a “one size fits all” strategy of e-Infrastructure diffusion. Sustainability was also a core issue, whereas barriers to resource sharing could mostly be resolved with technological solutions, and skills and training activities are a reflection of the general “user dilemma”. Our recommendations to EU policy-makers point the way to promoting e-Infrastructure development and application in the social sciences and humanities.
Assessing the web connectivity of research groups on an international scale
The purpose of this paper is to claim that it is useful to assess the web connectivity of research groups, describe hyperlink‐based techniques to achieve this and present brief details of European life sciences research groups as a case study. Design/methodology/approach A commercial search engine was harnessed to deliver hyperlink data via its automatic query submission interface. A special purpose link analysis tool, LexiURL, then summarised and graphed the link data in appropriate ways. Findings Webometrics can provide a wide range of descriptive information about the international connectivity of research groups. Research limitations/implications Only one field was analysed, data was taken from only one search engine, and the results were not validated. Practical implications Web connectivity seems to be particularly important for attracting overseas job applicants and to promote research achievements and capabilities, and hence we contend that it can be useful for national and international governments to use webometrics to ensure that the web is being used effectively by research groups. Originality/value This is the first paper to make a case for the value of using a range of webometric techniques to evaluate the web presences of research groups within a field, and possibly the first “applied” webometrics study produced for an external contract.