Memo: Research Infrastructures and the Regional Dimension of the ERA

'Research Infrastructure' are facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct top-level research in their respective fields. This definition covers: major scientific equipment or sets of instruments; knowledge based-resources such as collections, archives or structured scientific information; enabling ICT-based infrastructures such as Grid, computing, software and communications. Such Research Infrastructures may be 'single-sited' or 'distributed' (a network of resources).