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The European ALMA Regional Centre Network: A Geographically Distributed User Support Model

In recent years there has been a paradigm shift from centralised to geographically distributed resources. Individual entities are no longer able to host or afford the necessary expertise in-house, and, as a consequence, society increasingly relies on widespread collaborations. Although such collaborations are now the norm for scientific projects, more technical structures providing support to a distributed scientific community without direct financial or other material benefits are scarce. The network of European ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) nodes is an example of such an internationally distributed user support network. It is an organised effort to provide the European ALMA user community with uniform expert support to enable optimal usage and scientific output of the ALMA facility. The network model for the European ARC nodes is described in terms of its organisation, communication strategies and user support.