Nevertheless, achieving a constellation of constituents and influential factors that facilitate the prospective sustainability of a Virtual Research Environment as a socio-technical system, is still an unresolved problem. Whereas this certainly is due to many reasons, we believe that among them a deficit of systematic investigation into the actual research practices of humanists and their sustainable representation in the digital realm is of crucial importance. We consider the inclusion of the scholars essential as the actors of a community of practice, who constitute precisely with this scholarly practice the basis for the development of research environments and infrastructures.