Abstract
National research and education networks (NRENs) play a critical role in the development of communication network infrastructure and networked services for researchers and educators. They help close ‘digital divides’ between and within countries and are an essential factor for national and international development. In collaboration with the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN), the TANDEM project has developed a roadmap for the development of NRENs in the region. This was based on the results of a survey that was conducted to investigate user requirements of networked services. The analysis of the 561 responses to a three-part questionnaire divided into 11 education, 22 research and 2 technical management questions identified key educational and research service needs. This article reports on the results of the survey with respect to research services. Highlights include respondents wanting regular access to online conference and academic articles (89%), a range of research services including online library resources, video conferencing, collaboration tools, online data access and storage, online library resources and inter-university login (>87%), access to remote computing facilities (80%) and high performance computing facilities (77%). A desire to share data with others online (74%) was also identified. Respondents also indicated that they would like to access research services through a range of device types–Laptops (96%), Fixed PC (86%) and Mobile Devices (81%). Poor network connectivity was consistently identified as being a major barrier to research in the region.
Highlights
The growth of virtual research communities and large-scale international research projects has resulted in revolutionary changes to the ways scientific research is undertaken (Maciel et al, 2015; Schroeder et al, 2007)
Classification of subjects was made according to the unit of assessment provided in the United Kingdom (UK) Research Excellence Framework5
National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and e-Infrastructure networked services are vital platforms for the development of e-Science and enablers of progress in many areas of the world affected by the ‘digital divide’ (Bornman, 2016)
Summary
The growth of virtual research communities and large-scale international research projects has resulted in revolutionary changes to the ways scientific research is undertaken (Maciel et al, 2015; Schroeder et al, 2007). The term ‘virtual research community’ refers to a distributed group of researchers and associated scientific tools working together in a shared virtual platform using dedicated ICT infrastructures or e-Infrastructures (Andronico et al, 2011). Such an interoperable and networked structure is alternatively referred to as an ‘information infrastructure’ (Edwards at al., 2009; Hanseth and Lyytinen, 2004, 2010; Ribes and Finholt, 2009). The lack of network infrastructure and NRENs in developing countries is a potential barrier to participation in international research and education. The challenge here is how developing countries can build sufficient technological capacity in order to meaningfully engage with research and innovation in existing and new collaborative research communities both within and external to their own contexts
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