Developing the UK e-social science research program

Halfpenny, P; Procter, R; Lin, Y; Voss, A

Abstract

The National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS) was established by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 2004 as its contribution to the U.K. e-Science program. NCeSS’s mission is to enable social scientists to exploit innovations in digital infrastructure so that they are able to address key challenges in their substantive research fields in new ways. This infrastructure, known as the ‘Grid’ or increasingly commonly as ‘e-Infrastructure’ (or ‘Cyberinfrastructure’ in the U.S.), comprises networked, interoperable, service-oriented, scalable computational tools and services.

The Centre forms part of the ESRC’s strategy to develop leading-edge methodological tools and techniques to enhance the U.K. social science research community’s capacity to collect, discover, access, manipulate, link, share, analyze and visualize both quantitative and qualitative data.1 To achieve its aims, NCeSS coordinates a program of e-Social Science research and makes available information, training, advice and support. The Centre is leading the development of an e-Infrastructure for the Social Sciences and is also responsible for providing advice to the ESRC on the future strategic direction of e-Social Science.

NCeSS has a distributed structure, with a coordinating Hub at the University of Manchester, and a set of major three-year research Nodes and smaller one-year projects distributed across the U.K. The Hub acts as the central resource base for e-Social Science issues and activities in the U.K., integrating them with ESRC research methods initiatives and the U.K. e-Science core program.

In this chapter, we review the progress of the NCeSS program, report on its current impact on social science research, reflect on the development of the research roadmap and, taking into account factors likely to influence future adoption, consider its trajectory over the next five years.

Citation

Halfpenny, P., Procter, R., Lin, Y., & Voss, A. (2009). Developing the UK e-social science research program. In N. Jankowski (Ed.), E-research : transformation in scholarly practice (73-90). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203875049

• Publication Date: Jun 26, 2009
• Deposit Date: Jan 6, 2012
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 73-90
• Book Title: E-research : transformation in scholarly practice
• ISBN: 9780415990288
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203875049
• Keywords: e-Social Sciences, e-Scienec, e-Research, e-Humanity, digital humanity, research policy,
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203875049
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/