The purpose of this session is to discuss the nomadic but often embedded digital all-rounders in the academic community who support research. They go by many names but often share similar skill sets as competent communicators, problem solvers, teachers, researchers and agents of change. They support a variety of areas that can include Open Access, scholarly communications, impact, social and traditional media, copyright, research technologies and horizon scanning. They don’t exist as an umbrella group - perhaps it is time that such a community existed. Given the success of the learning technology community, isn’t it time we had a research equivalent?