“The research enterprise of a leading academic institution is a complex system of human, physical and digital infrastructures that functions to support the production of new knowledge and the advancement and training of research practitioners.”
I agree with the notion of research being a complex system. You cannot have digital without physical, and physical without humans. For example, software cannot exist without a computer, and a computer cannot be created without a human. Humans (professors, researchers) are the catalyst of research, and need the aid of physical (equipment) and digital (software, network) infrastructures to get the knowledge that they seek.
After reading this sentence several times, it got me thinking of the idea of knowledge as an object because of the use of “production.” It reminds me of a concept of a factory more than an academic setting, where humans interact with machines (physical) and digital software to produce an object. A more suitable word would be “learning” or “understanding,” which is a better fitting when talking about an academia environment.
The last bit about advancement and training is well placed in the sentence since technology (physical and digital) is always improving (Moore’s Law) allowing practitioners to get better and more accurate results.
Overall, I agree with this sentence. The only thing that I would change is a couple of words.
Certainly researchers learn as they perform their studies. I think knowledge production involves spreading that learning across the field of research and, potentially, the greater public.