Awareness of services

Researchers are often not aware of services available locally, regionally or nationally. In general, there seems to be a lack of systematic introduction to the services and the training available, which results in a lack of awareness as well as a lack of understanding of how services and methods can facilitate research and what different options exist. Some respondents from information services have suggested that there is an emphasis on basic desktop computing support caused by the wide uptake of desktop computing and that this may have led to a lack of emphasis on applications and advanced research tools.

“maybe now [information services] need to get back and think about helping people with what it is they want to use computers for.”

Researchers are often working with systems they know without becoming aware of the existence of other systems or recognising alternatives.

What I tend to do is go straight to the web of science and you never really know what is going on to the rest of the site and I don't know what other things are available" (researcher)

"I guess the big barrier is actually just finding out about what’s available" (researcher)

"I think the uptake of certain services like [...] the British library offer secure electronic delivery of documents which I think a number of researchers either haven’t used, or weren’t aware of, despite our best efforts to publicise this" (information systems professional)

I mean in our organisation generally people don’t know who JISC are and what they do [...] I know that some of the roadshows that have been happening have been addressing that" (researcher)

The fragmentation of researchers into small groups can add to the problem of awareness, especially when groups work in isolation. This is a problem that can be found quite regularly in some discipline areas.

"I’d imagine there might be an issue with awareness of what is available both locally and nationally and possibly regionally. I’d imagine that people because they work in small departments and in small groups which won’t appear a particular [institution] trait would tend to work with what they know, and may not be aware of just communications or larger issues. You may find two research centres pretty close to each other with a completely different solution to the same problem and unaware of it." (information services professional)

Support and outreach activities varied significantly between different kinds of institutions and between different disciplines. Awareness of services provided within an institution is systematically reported to be higher than that of equivalent services provided elsewhere even if those have a national remit.

Researchers appear to find out about e-Infrastructure services through events such as the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, through colleagues or workshops. We might conclude that the network of social relations of people already involved in using e-Infrastructure services is a key enabler of uptake.