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Towards a Cyberinfrastructure for Enhanced Scientific Collaboration: Providing its 'Soft' Foundations May Be the Hardest Part
Abstract
A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises to enable more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more coming to be seen as critically dependent upon effective access to, and sharing of digital research data, and of the information tools that facilitate data being structured for efficient storage, search, retrieval, display and higher level analysis. The February 2003 report of the Atkins Committee to the US NSF Directorate of Computer and Information System Engineering urged that funding be provided for a major enhancement of computer and network technologies, thereby creating a cyberinfrastructure whose facilities would support and transform the conduct of scientific and engineering research. The articulation of this programmatic vision reflects a widely shared expectation that solving the technical engineering problems associated with the advanced hardware and software systems of the cyberinfrastructure will yield revolutionary payoffs by empowering individual researchers and increasing the scale, scope and flexibility of collective research enterprises. Animated by much the same vision, the UK e-Science Core Programme has been engaged in developing an array of open standards middleware platforms, intended to support Grid enabled science and engineering research. This paper, however, argues that engineering breakthroughs alone will not be enough to achieve the outcomes envisaged for these undertakings. Success in realizing the potential of e-Science - and other global collaborative activities supported by the 'cyberinfrastructure '- if it is to be achieved, will more likely be the resultant of a nexus of interrelated social, legal and technical transformations. The socio-institutional elements of a new infrastructure supporting research collaborations - that is to say, its supposedly 'softer' (non-engineering) parts - are every bit as complicated as the hardware and computer software, and, indeed, may prove much harder to devise and implement. The roots of this latter class of challenges facing 'e-Science' lie in the micro- and meso-level incentive structures created by the existing legal and administrative regimes. Although a number of these same conditions and circumstances appear to be equally significant obstacles to commercial provision of Grid services in inter-organizational contexts, the domain of publicly supported scientific collaboration will provide a more hospitable environment in which to experiment with a variety of new approaches to solving these problems. Towards that end, several 'solution modalities' can be proposed that feature a modular contractual approach to the flexible design of research collaboration agreements. The basic principles and the institutional mode of implementation that will be suggested are sufficiently general that they could also be made applicable for fields of information-intensive collaboration in business and finance that must regularly transcend organizational boundaries.
... Unfortunately STIN project does not reach the following step in the semantics stair, the ontology approach. David (2004) makes an astonishing utterance regarding the capability of scientists to perform e-research in the scopes provided by modern ICT's. This author recognizes the significant advance in information and communication technologies, as well as the internet computing and grid technologies. ...
... Our proposal tries to enhance the effects of data and information related to scientific research. According to David (2004), "scientific research collaboration is more and more coming to be seen as critically dependent upon effective access to, and sharing of digital research data. Equally critical are the information tools that facilitate data being structured for efficient storage, search, retrieval, display and higher level analysis, and the codified and archived information resources that may readily be located and reused in new combinations to generate further additions to the corpus of reliable scientific knowledge" (p. ...
... This is an important achievement, since a synthetic representation demands specific knowledge from the concrete object / situation represented; this knowledge, once isolated and represented in machines, promotes the enforcement of the indicators linked to complexity's control. By enabling this knowledge in machines, the synthetic representation can be easily transferred through regular channels that actually are used to transfer data and information in the Internet, as suggested by David (2004). The pending tasks in this project are the design of the interaction/collaboration model among participants and the implementation of the model in specific platforms. ...
This chapter presents a proposal for modeling/simulating experiments conducted by scientists working in common scientific problems, based on gathering and exploiting knowledge elements produced among them. The authors' approach enables the adaptation of knowledge structures (bounded to scientific problems) and is based on recurrent refining processes that are fed by indicators, which come from collaboration among the scientists involved. This scheme captures a web-based infrastructure, which allows scientists to collaborate on synthesizing experiments online. The proposed model is approached as an ontology that contains scientific concepts and actions. This ontology is linked to the scientific problem and represents both the "common understanding" for such a problem and the way it could be managed by the group. This dynamic ontology will change its structure according to the collaboration acts among scientists. Frequent collaboration over certain elements of the experiment will make them prevail in time. Besides, this process has been defined in a way that provides a global understanding of the scientific treatment that could be applied on any scientific problem. Hence, the ontology represents a virtualization of the scientific experiment. This whole representation is aimed at providing the media for developing e-research among scientists that are working on common problems.
... Moreover, Inasmuch as advances in information and communication technologies are seen to play a vital role as an enabler or facilitator of collaboration (e.g. Castells 1996), it is not surprising that research policy on both sides of the Atlantic has sought to promote the creation, deployment and diffusion of digital " collaboration technologies " (see David and Steinmueller 2003, David 2005). In the US, the NSF instigated programmes to develop Collaboratories, the Grid, and now the Cyberinfrastructure; the EU is pursuing e-Infrastructure; and in the UK, EPSRC coordinated the e-Science Programme and presently is working towards the establishment of a subsequent programme to enable the " digital economy " (see Finholt 2003; EPSRC 2007; NSF 2007). ...
... Thus, rather than being an expression of " top-down " priorities, the skewed distribution of the projects in the space described by the VLO may have been a response to practical, " bottom-up " considerations of the " delays and transactions costs " that could be expected in forging contractual agreements for the conduct of close and continuing collaborative interactions across organisational boundaries. It has been argued (see David and Spence (2003, 2008), David (2006)) that considerations of that sort, unless addressed by the formation of flexible institutional arrangement the facilitate inter-organizational contracting, and remove existing institutionalized impediments to direct collaboration among distributed researchers, will most likely exert powerful forces shaping the evolution of the U.S. " Cyberinfrastrure " program and the EU's " e-Infrastructure. " But the direction they would impart would perversely work to limit the realization of the available technology's potentially transformative contribution to enhancing the global conduct of scientific research. ...
... Thus, rather than being an expression of " top-down " priorities, the skewed distribution of the projects in the space described by the VLO may have been a response to practical, " bottom-up " considerations of the " delays and transactions costs " that could be expected in forging contractual agreements for the conduct of close and continuing collaborative interactions across organisational boundaries. It has been argued (see David and Spence (2003, 2008), David (2006)) that considerations of that sort, unless addressed by the formation of flexible institutional arrangement the facilitate inter-organizational contracting, and remove existing institutionalized impediments to direct collaboration among distributed researchers, will most likely exert powerful forces shaping the evolution of the U.S. " Cyberinfrastrure " program and the EU's " e-Infrastructure. " But the direction they would impart would perversely work to limit the realization of the available technology's potentially transformative contribution to enhancing the global conduct of scientific research. ...
In an undertaking such as the U.S. Cyberinfrastructure Initiative, or the UK e-science program, which span many years and comprise a great many projects funded by multiple agencies, it can be very difficult to keep tabs on what everyone is doing. But, it is not impossible. In this paper, we propose the construction of ontologies as a means of monitoring a research program’s portfolio of projects. In particular, we introduce the “virtual laboratory ontology” (VLO) and show how its application to e-Science yields a mapping of the distribution of projects in several dimensions of the “collaboration space.” In this paper, we sketch out a method to induce a project mapping from project descriptions and present the resulting map for the UK e-science program. This paper shows the proposed mapping approach to be informative as well as feasible, and we expect that its further development can prove to be substantively useful for future work in cyber-infrastructure-building.
... In terms of the economics of innovation, David (2004) has argued that openness has been a key feature of science that can be traced back to early modern Europe. The longer-term rise of scientific knowledge which fostered economic growth, he argues, rested on a particular constellation of decentralized patronage competing for reputation, which led to the rapid disclosure of information and an ethos of open science. ...
... The longer-term rise of scientific knowledge which fostered economic growth, he argues, rested on a particular constellation of decentralized patronage competing for reputation, which led to the rapid disclosure of information and an ethos of open science. These longer-term conditions, David (2004) argues, are 'fragile' rather than 'robust' and thus in need of continued nurturing. Especially so when these conditions are being challenged by changes in the balance between open and proprietary research in the context of e-Science and the commodification of academic knowledge more broadly through knowledge transfer through patenting and 'spin-offs' (Slaughter and Leslie, 1999). ...
... In relation to e-Research infrastructures as opposed to the individual e-Science and e-Social Science projects reported in this study, Schroeder (2007) has described the forces promoting open science as well as the limits and counterforces to this openness, arguing, like David and Hall (2006), that an important battle to shape the openness of e-Research infrastructures is taking place. David (2004) has also raised the issue of informal and formal norms relating to legal and economic arrangements in e-Science. Emphasizing that informal arrangements have been less-well discussed than the contractual approaches to open science. ...
Purpose
This paper seeks to discuss the question of “openness” in e‐Science.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on 12 in‐depth interviews with principal investigators, project managers and developers involved in UK e‐Science projects, together with supporting documentary evidence from project web sites. The approach was to explore the juxtaposition of research governance at the institutional level and local research practices at the project level. Interview questions focused on research inputs, software development processes, access to resources, project documentation, dissemination of outputs and by‐products, licensing issues, and institutional contracts.
Findings
The findings suggest that, although there is a widely shared ethos of openness in everyday research practice, there are many uncertainties and yet‐to‐be resolved issues, despite strong policy imperatives towards openly shared resources.
Research limitations/implications
The paper concludes by observing a stratification of openness in practice and the need for more nuanced understanding of openness at the level of policy making. This research was based on interviews within a limited number of e‐Science/Social Science projects and the intention is to address this in future work by scaling the study up to a survey that will reach the entire UK e‐Science/Social Science community.
Practical implications
The fundamental challenge in resolving openness in practice and policy, and thereby moving towards a sustainable infrastructure for e‐Science, is the coordination and integration of goals across e‐Science efforts, rather than one of resolving IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) issues, which has been the central focus of openness debates thus far.
Originality/value
The question of openness has previously been posed on the macro‐level of research policy, e.g. whether science as a whole can be characterized as open science, or in relation to the dissemination of published outputs, e.g. Open Access. Instead, a fine‐grained perspective is taken focusing on individual research projects and the various facets of openness in practice.
... These studies tell us, for instance, that researchers are less willing to share their research data if other researchers might use their data to publish before them, if they have to expend significant effort in order to share the data and if they believe that their data could be misinterpreted [4,[6][7][8]. While these factors represent the most immediate or proximal concerns of researchers, they reflect the institutional arrangements surrounding research practice such as the systems of rewards, rules and regulations, external legal systems and informal, epistemic community norms and conventions [9,10]. While the digitization of data and work has made research data sharing possible, the slow take-up of research data sharing and data re-use has led to the recognition that optimal levels of data sharing will not occur without reshaping institutional arrangements so that data sharing is both facilitated and incentivized. ...
... This domain is formally classified as the field of research nominated by the researcher (e.g., in a grant application) but is also reflected in the type of organisation funding the research (e.g., a health provider vs a transport company). Each industry sector has unique legislative, regulatory and policy frameworks which establish rules and norms for data management and sharing which are reflected in the data sharing policies and IP requirements of research funders [9]. There is already evidence to suggest that these factors influence data sharing practices. ...
This study delineates the relative importance of organisational, research discipline and application domain factors in influencing researchers’ data sharing practices in Australia’s national scientific and industrial research agency. We surveyed 354 researchers and found that the number of data deposits made by researchers were related to the openness of the data culture and the contractual inhibitors experienced by researchers. Multi-level modelling revealed that organisational unit membership explained 10%, disciplinary membership explained 6%, and domain membership explained 4% of the variance in researchers’ intentions to share research data. However, only the organisational measure of openness to data sharing explained significant unique variance in data sharing. Thus, whereas previous research has tended to focus on disciplinary influences on data sharing, this study suggests that factors operating within the organisation have the most powerful influence on researchers’ data sharing practices. The research received approval from the organisation’s Human Research Ethics Committee (no. 014/18).
... La generación de nuevos contextos de reflexión, experimentación e innovación. La promoción de la e-ciencia traería consigo la apertura de un nuevo contexto, en el que la falsa Hipótesis de Ortega propuesto por Cole y Cole (Agenjo, 2002), y retomada por Bailón-Moreno et al, (2007) y Cabeza-Clavijo et al (2009), en las que el progreso científico estaría siendo soportado por aportes mínimos de una multitud de científicos, pudiese estar convirtiéndose en realidad, gracias a la promoción de diferentes tipos de aplicabilidad científica mediada por las TIC, de acuerdo con David (2006): E-ciencia orientada a la formación de comunidades, en las que su preocupación se orientaría a generar iniciativas que ayuden al diálogo sincrónico académico (Ejemplo, las iniciativas de encuentros virtuales de redes académicas nacionales y regionales como la Red Clara en América Latina). 5 E-ciencia orientada a la explotación de datos que promueven la recopilación, manejo y procesamientos de datos pertenecientes a diversos investigadores, (ejemplo, el proyecto LAMP de Princeton 6 y el Proyecto Atlas estudiado aquí). E-ciencia orientada a maximizar los recursos tecnológicos para desarrollar mecanismos de ejecución sobre procedimientos comunes de trabajo (ejemplo, las iniciativas de Grid clusters aplicadas en el caso del estudio, Proyecto Atlas). ...
... Esto quizá se deba al poco uso de canales virtuales más participativos, el empleo de modelos de comunicación digital tradicionales (imágenes y documentos), y al bajo nivel de uso de las herramientas de interacción y personalización de la información dispuestas en los escenarios virtuales de divulgación científica analizados. Ello, pese a que según la clasificación propuesta por David (2006), el proyecto Atlas se caracteriza por tener diferentes niveles de aplicabilidad de la e-ciencia con base en los diferentes micro-sitios o portales entrelazados en él; sin que ello esté generando una promoción elevada de mecanismos de aparición de super-usuarios (Fumero y Roca, 2007), encargados de producir y consumir los contenidos, informaciones y conocimientos generados al interior de este proyecto. ...
This article analyzes 110 links related to the Atlas Project's main website, in order to study the general features that characterize the use of Web 2.0 in the virtual scenarios of scientific dissemination, within this case study. The results suggest, among other things, that the dissemination of science is characterized by a low level of visibility on the Internet, an open access policy broadly appropriate by the scientific community, but with low implementation of multi-format communication models through Web 2.0, in which highly specialized contents are exposed, aimed to the presentation of reports and results, presenting low appropriation of tools for interaction and personalization of information. It is concluded that the presence of a virtual scenario discussed here presents limitations in relation to the usability of the Web 2.0 as it limits the exercise of this function to experts belonging to the same scientific collective connected with the case study.
... Although suitable technologies and human-centered design can help create virtual settings in which people feel more comfortable, there are social and institutional barriers to the success of a collaboratory. However, as David (2005) pointed out rightly, effective technologies for e-research are likely to be the result of a nexus of interrelated social, legal, and technical changes. Unfortunately, technological progress has gone fast to produce advanced software and hardware to sustain scientific research, but social arrangements enabling organizations, groups, and individuals to collaborate better and in a more affordable manner have improved at a much slower rate (David). ...
... The emphasis on the tech--40 -nological development of a cyberinfrastructure for research has overlooked the crucial importance of those aspects. As a result, the progress in constructing social, legal, and organizational arrangements that facilitate collaboration has not kept pace with advances in engineering, leading to many inefficiencies in managing complex interinstitutional collaborations and in solving the difficulties that often appear in those settings (David, 2005). According to David, critical environmental and organizational dimensions include: ...
... Focusing on tertiary education, this paper examines the promises of ICTs in the education sector, first as a way to better participate in the advancement of the knowledge economy, second as a way to introduce innovations. Leaving aside the impact of ICTs on the research or e-science performed by tertiary education institutions (Atkins et al., 2003;David, 2004). We concentrate on e-learning, broadly understood as the use of ICTs to enhance or support learning and teaching in (tertiary) education. ...
... There is no one-best-way or trajectory for e-learning development at tertiary education institutions. But it might prove more difficult to provide the "softer" social, organisational and legal changes in tertiary education than provide the technological infrastructures necessary to fully embrace the advantages of e-learning (David, 2004). It will depend on a whole range of factors not necessarily related to the development of e-learning including: i Changes in the funding of tertiary education and in particular e-learning funding; ii Student demography; iii Regulatory and legal frameworks; iv Competition between traditional tertiary education institution themselves and with new private providers; v ...
The promises of e-learning for transforming tertiary education and thereby advancing the knowledge economy have rested on three arguments: E-learning could expand and widen access to tertiary education and training; improve the quality of education; and reduce its cost. The study evaluated these three promises with the sparse existing data and evidence and concluded that the reality has not been up to the promises so far in terms of pedagogic innovation, while it has already significantly improved the overall learning (and teaching) experience. Reflecting on the ways that would help develop e-learning further, the study identified the development and investment model as the way forward.
... However, quality has to be ensured substantially. There have been a number of studies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] to find out the impact of education imparted by Open Universities which have started their role since last century. In India Andhra Pradesh Open University was the first followed by Indira Gandhi National Open University in New Delhi established by Govt. of India. ...
... Several researchers (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) have concluded that developing a knowledge through distance education programmes are receiving importance in the society. As a result, the western countries have developed strategies to encourage this effort to the aspirants not having the opportunity to receive education in Conventional Institutions of Higher Education [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. ...
The establishment of Open Universities was essential to provide education to those who are not able to get admission in the formal system of education. In India being most populous country. The establishing of Open Universities started in the beginning of 1970s in one of the Province followed by Indira Gandhi National Open University established by Govt. of India. At present most of the Provinces have Open Universities with full support by local Governments. With advent of Information Communication Technology, the delivery of education at far places has been quite simple subject to availability of required infrastructure which is lacking in some parts of rural sector of India. The present study has conducted the impact of Information Communication Technology being used in Open Universities of northern part of India. The age group of respondents varied from 8 to more than 30 years and their living conditions, parental income, family support, interest in open learning, objectives of life and other similar parameters have been taken into account to arrange the meaningful impact of ICT in such system of education. It has been observed that the uses of various tools of ICT have not been fully exploited to facilitate the education through open mode. This is because of lack of adequate infrastructural facilities at both delivery and receiving ends. With the active steps taken by Govt. of India through National Mission on Education through ICT it is expected that in a decade the impact of ICT will be quite feasible and user sector will be beneficial in receiving the education in a meaningful manner.
... La generación de nuevos contextos de reflexión, experimentación e innovación. La promoción de la e-ciencia traería consigo la apertura de un nuevo contexto, en el que la falsa Hipótesis de Ortega propuesto por Cole y Cole (Agenjo, 2002), y retomada por Bailón-Moreno et al, (2007) y Cabeza-Clavijo et al (2009), en las que el progreso científico estaría siendo soportado por aportes mínimos de una multitud de científicos, pudiese estar convirtiéndose en realidad, gracias a la promoción de diferentes tipos de aplicabilidad científica mediada por las TIC, de acuerdo con David (2006): E-ciencia orientada a la formación de comunidades, en las que su preocupación se orientaría a generar iniciativas que ayuden al diálogo sincrónico académico (Ejemplo, las iniciativas de encuentros virtuales de redes académicas nacionales y regionales como la Red Clara en América Latina). 5 E-ciencia orientada a la explotación de datos que promueven la recopilación, manejo y procesamientos de datos pertenecientes a diversos investigadores, (ejemplo, el proyecto LAMP de Princeton 6 y el Proyecto Atlas estudiado aquí). E-ciencia orientada a maximizar los recursos tecnológicos para desarrollar mecanismos de ejecución sobre procedimientos comunes de trabajo (ejemplo, las iniciativas de Grid clusters aplicadas en el caso del estudio, Proyecto Atlas). ...
... Esto quizá se deba al poco uso de canales virtuales más participativos, el empleo de modelos de comunicación digital tradicionales (imágenes y documentos), y al bajo nivel de uso de las herramientas de interacción y personalización de la información dispuestas en los escenarios virtuales de divulgación científica analizados. Ello, pese a que según la clasificación propuesta por David (2006), el proyecto Atlas se caracteriza por tener diferentes niveles de aplicabilidad de la e-ciencia con base en los diferentes micro-sitios o portales entrelazados en él; sin que ello esté generando una promoción elevada de mecanismos de aparición de super-usuarios (Fumero y Roca, 2007), encargados de producir y consumir los contenidos, informaciones y conocimientos generados al interior de este proyecto. ...
This article analyzes 110 links related to the Atlas Project's main website, in order to study the general features that characterize the use of Web 2.0 in the virtual scenarios of scientific dissemination, within this case study. The results suggest, among other things, that the dissemination of science is characterized by a low level of visibility on the Internet, an open access policy broadly appropriate by the scientific community, but with low implementation of multi-format communication models through Web 2.0, in which highly specialized contents are exposed, aimed to the presentation of reports and results, presenting low appropriation of tools for interaction and personalization of information. It is concluded that the presence of a virtual scenario discussed here presents limitations in relation to the usability of the Web 2.0 as it limits the exercise of this function to experts belonging to the same scientific collective connected with the case study.
... Elsewhere he writes: "Scientific and technological collaboration is more and more coming to be seen as critically dependent upon effective access to and sharing of digital research data, and of the information tools that facilitate data being structured for efficient storage, search, retrieval, display and higher level analysis" (David, 2005). ...
... In modern scientific tradition, collaboration among scientists and the production of scientific public goods have been the engine for scientific production and the justification for public investment in science [18]. Scientists have been expected to collaborate across disciplines and over generations so as to contribute to a stock of interconnected knowledge needed for scientific advance. ...
Ciencia abierta es producir conocimiento de forma colaborativa con actores que no pertenecen formalmente a un proyecto de investigación aspirando a dejar los resultados de ese proceso en libre disponibilidad para que otros puedan re-utilizarlos. En este trabajo proponemos un estudio empírico para registrar el alcance y las características de las prácticas de ciencia abierta en Argentina sobre la base de una encuesta realizada a 1463 investigadores del sistema público de ciencia y tecnología. Los resultados traslucen un gran potencial para las políticas de promoción de la ciencia abierta en el país. Una proporción muy alta de investigadores ha demostrado interés en alguna de las prácticas de apertura de conocimiento, aunque reina cierta confusión sobre la definición del término. Para muchos el concepto de “interactuar con otros” es familiar a su práctica profesional, por lo que se podría esperar que una profundización del compromiso con la apertura sea bien recibida.
... In modern scientific tradition, collaboration among scientists and the production of scientific public goods have been the engine for scientific production and the justification for public investment in science [18]. Scientists have been expected to collaborate across disciplines and over generations so as to contribute to a stock of interconnected knowledge needed for scientific advance. ...
... All this can make it difficult for scientists to adopt the more radical aspects of the new practice. The importance of various social and legal aspects of enabling individuals, groups, and organisations to engage in collaborative work can get lost in a fixation with information technology infrastructures, and other technical aspects of collaboration (David 2004). ...
... O compartilhamento de dados, em especial, caracteriza-se como um aspecto da colaboração científica em franca expansão, carreado pela crescente massa de dados gerados por métodos modernos de extração, manipulação e armazenamento, facilitados pela nova geração de infraestruturas de informação e comunicação e ferramentas baseadas na internet, permitindo ampliar ainda mais o processo de pesquisa criando assim novos formatos e dinâmicas de produção coletiva em ciência, tecnologia e inovação (CT&I). Para David (2006), a colaboração científica e tecnológica é cada vez mais criticamente dependente do acesso e do compartilhamento de dados de pesquisa. ...
RESUMO A falta de indexação dos títulos de revistas científicas de Ciências Humanas e Sociais em bases de dados comerciais restringe a investigação sobre seu impacto. O Acesso Aberto, ferramentas como o Google Scholar (GS) e aplicativos de processamento de dados permitem a busca e a recuperação de citações de artigos, sinalizando uma alternativa para os estudos sobre o impacto da produção científica publicada nessas áreas. Este estudo apresenta um projeto piloto de compartilhamento de dados de citações de periódicos para a investigação colaborativa por parte da comunidade de cientometria brasileira com o objetivo de incentivar uma maior utilização do GS para fins bibliométricos.
Palavras-chave: Dados de Citação; Google Acadêmico; Periódicos Científicos; Colaboração.
ABSTRACT The lack of indexing for titles of scientific journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities in commercial databases makes it difficult to carry out an investigation on their impact. Open Access and tools such as Google Scholar (GS) and software for data processing allow search and the recovery of article citations, which can be regarded as an alternative for the studies on the impact of scientific production published in these areas. This study presents a pilot project for sharing citation data from Brazilian journals for further collaborative research by the national scientometrics community with the aim of encouraging greater use of GS for bibliometric purposes.
Keywords: Citation Data; Google Scholar; Sharing; Journals; Scientific Collaboration.
... Obviously the governments have the highest political level in all countries that influence the future orientation on cyber-based learning systems. In recent years, some of the core government plans of these issues have been around to create intelligent infrastructures, to enhance collaboration and to work on readiness indices (45,46). Despite overwhelming evidence of policy initiatives in cyber issues, since 1980, there have still been some gaps between policy-makers objectives and what actually happens at the point of policy implementation (47), due to potential conflict of interest among leaders and stakeholders, which had a significant impact on implementation of formulated policies. ...
Introduction
Over the past few decades, two revolutionary approaches have emerged as a new form of medical education: Electronic Medical Education and Web-based Medical Education. A number of well-known medical institutions, such as Harvard and Johns Hopkins used a wide range of cyberspace capabilities to increase their competitiveness. Researchers have expressed that cyberspace will change health system’s main objective of training physicians and medical education. We conducted this study to identify the health system critical considerations on core issues, involving the development of medical education on cyberspace.
Methods
In order to conduct this study, we observed the steps of a critical literature review, combined with the ‘Four-phase method’ adopted by Carnwell and Daly. We focused on particular literature on health and cyber system functions; it was associated with systemic approach.
Results
We developed a six-level taxonomy, Cyber level, Governance level, Ministerial level, Organizational level, Program level and Performance level, as a key solution that can be applied for the success of medical education on cyberspace. The results were summarized and appraised in more details.
Conclusion
Medical education on cyberspace is a complex interdisciplinary system. It is important that all aspects of the health systems be involved as integral to the development of cyber based medical education; without this convergence, we will be confused by the decisions made by others within the system. Health system should also communicate with those external sectors that are critical to achieving better learning on cyberspace. Integrated planning, governance and management of medical education in cyberspace are pivotal elements for the promotion.
... Technological support for the recruitment of participants has, so far, been developed and promoted by volunteer computing practitioners and project administrators. While the scientific effort has focused on what is known as the technical aspect of participative computational infrastructures, participant recruitment has been seen as minor problem [31]. For example, the original BOINC publication by Anderson [1] dedicates only one paragraph to the recruitment problem and, after listing a few community-oriented features of its web component (which I later present as the basic set) finalizes by saying: "These features are important in attracting and retaining participants, and in providing a 'customer support' mechanism that consumes little project resources." ...
The Mini-Grid is a volunteer computing infrastructure that gathers computational power from multiple participants and uses it to execute bio-informatics algorithms. The Mini-Grid is an instance of a larger set of systems that I call participative computational infrastructures (PCI). PCIs depend on their participants to provide a service, with every instance of the system executing similar tasks and collaborating with others. Participants to these infrastruc- tures come together to contribute resources like computational power, storage capacity, network connectivity and human reasoning skills. While plenty of research has focused on the technical aspect of these infrastructures (task parallelization, distribution, robustness, and security), the participative aspect, which deals with how to recruit and maintain participants, has been largely overlooked. Despite the multiple experiences with volunteer computing projects, only a few researchers have looked into the motivational factors affecting the enrolment and permanence of participants. This dissertation studies participation from the broader context of the relationship between users and infrastructures in the field of Human- Computer Interaction (HCI), and argues that participative computational infrastructures face a fundamental recruitment challenge derived from their being “invisible” computational systems. To counter this challenge this dissertation proposes the notion of Infrastructure Awareness: a feedback mechanism on the state of, and changes in, the properties of computational infrastructures provided in the periphery of the user’s attention, and supporting gradual disclosure of detailed information on user’s request. Working with users of the Mini-Grid, this thesis shows the design process of two infrastructure awareness systems aimed at supporting the recruitment of participants, the implementation of one possible technical strategy, and an in-the-wild evaluation. The thesis finalizes with a discussion of the results and implications of infrastructure awareness for participative and other computational infrastructures.
... O tom složenom procesu koji uključuje pitanja povjerenja, rizika, intelektualnih prava i sl. pisali su P. A. David (2004) čestica i sl., a koji sami po sebi već predstavljaju najnaprednije vidove informacijske i komunikacijske tehnologije. Znanstvenici humanističkih znanosti također za potrebe svog znanstveno-istraživačkog rada generiraju velike količine teksta, slika, videozapisa i sl., koji predstavljaju podatke znanstvenog istraživanja humanističkih znanosti. ...
The paper presents an overview of some problems of information science which are explicitly portrayed in literature. It covers the following issues: information explosion, information flood and data deluge, information retrieval and relevance of information, and finally, the problem of scientific communication. The purpose of this paper is to explain why knowledge acquisition, can be considered as an issue in information sciences. The existing theoretical foundation within the information sciences, i.e. the DIKW hierarchy and its key concepts - data, information, knowledge and wisdom, is recognized as a symbolic representation as well as the theoretical foundation of the knowledge acquisition process. Moreover, it seems that the relationship between the DIKW hierarchy and the knowledge acquisition process is essential for a stronger foundation of information sciences in the 'body' of the overall human knowledge. In addition, the history of both the human and machine knowledge acquisition has been considered, as well as a proposal that the DIKW hierarchy take place as a symbol of general knowledge acquisition process, which could equally relate to both human and machine knowledge acquisition. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to modify the existing concept of the DIKW hierarchy. The appropriate modification of the DIKW hierarchy (one of which is presented in this paper) could result in a much more solid theoretical foundation of the knowledge acquisition process and information sciences as a whole.
The theoretical assumptions on which the knowledge acquisition process may be established as a problem of information science are presented at the end of the paper. The knowledge acquisition process does not necessarily have to be the subject of epistemology. It may establish a stronger link between the concepts of data and knowledge; furthermore, it can be used in the context of scientific research, but on the more primitive level than conducting of scientific methods. Moreover, the description of this process, as opposed to other problems of information sciences, necessarily involves all four DIKW concepts. Finally, the solution of this problem may result in a more complete theory of information.
The paper is written in Croatian (The original title: Proces stjecanja znanja kao problem informacijskih znanosti)
... Focusing on tertiary education, this article examines the promises of ICTs in the education sector, first as a way to better participate in the advancement of the knowledge economy and second as a way to introduce innovations. Leaving aside the impact of ICTs on the research or e-science performed by tertiary education institutions (see Atkins and al., 2003;David, 2004), we concentrate on e-learning, broadly understood or used interchangeably as the use of ICTs to enhance or support learning and teaching in (tertiary) education. E-learning is thus a generic term referring to different uses and intensities of uses of ICTs, from wholly online education to campus-based education through other forms of distance education supplemented with ICTs in some way. ...
The promises of information and communication technologies (ICT) have driven e-learning in transforming open distance education and thereby advancing the knowledge economy that rested on three arguments: E-learning could expand and widen access to tertiary education and learning; improve the quality of education; and reduce its cost. This article evaluates these three promises based on existing data and evidence. It concludes that the reality has not matched the promises so far in terms of pedagogic innovation. This does not mean that ICT development has not produced any significant positive results in improving the overall learning (and teaching) experience in the institutions and societies where it is implemented. That implies that what will help further to identify the new challenge. ICT development faces will be further research. Obstacles and problems of ICT that could have affected the open educational resource initiatives are yet to be established. The first section of the paper recalls some of the proposed values of e-learning. The second section compares achievements so far and suggests that e-learning could be only at an early stage of realising educational innovation aspirations. The third section highlights the challenges of future developments in e-learning.
... A new generation of information and collaboration infrastructure, accompanied by the emergence of the Internet and cloud computing is enabling easier, faster and shared access to a wide variety of distributed computing resources. Consequently, the scientific and technological collaboration is increasingly dependent on effective access and sharing of digital data and information tools that facilitate the structuring of data and efficiently allow its storage, search, recovery, visualization and analysis [9]. In this context, the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) solution proposed here has as purpose providing the tools and technologies needed by researchers from different taxonomic categories, institutions or countries to work collaboratively sharing a virtual infrastructure. ...
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A Species List of Flora is a working list of scientific descriptions of all known plants occurring within a given region. It represents an inventory in process, i.e., updates and new plant species are added every working day. The Flora checklist has an important value for the scientific community, government, industry and society, since it gathers accurate data on flora diversity. Knowing the Brazilian flora has been a commitment assumed by Brazil towards the international community. In 2009, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, in a joint action with several research institutions, started the development of a Virtual Research Environment based on crowdsourcing. The aim of the project was to support the collaborative and distributed work of an undefined number of pre-qualified trained taxonomists, grouped in their specialties. This article describes the technological aspects related to the ongoing work on the List of Species of the Brazilian Flora, which is a recent example of success in building a knowledge database collaboratively. It describes the mechanisms used for determining individual characteristics of potential participants (target audience), the means of collaboration and communication, as well as the technological platform developed to support a web-based crowdsourcing design for Virtual Research Environment. Some information on both the performance of the team of about 600 researchers and the quality of information produced are presented, also including some of the lessons learned and recommendations for future action.
... Part of the problem that e-infrastructures have been facing is that agencies prioritize shortterm innovative projects and rarely fund ongoing and long-term initiatives [13]. Options envisioned to ensure stable funding include creation of dedicated grants by funding agencies [13], the integration of e-infrastructures into larger collaborative information systems [3], and the creation of new independent public agencies to guide the work of producing, evaluating, and updating a formal legal framework for e-infrastructures' governance [14]. In 2009, the European Research Infrastructure Consortium was created to provide a new legal support system for European research infrastructures, highlighting the importance of new governance frameworks that provide lasting arrangements for secured funding [15]. ...
Addressing the challenges of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development requires global cooperation, support structures, and new governance models to integrate diverse initiatives and achieve massive, open exchange of data, tools, and technology. The traditional paradigm of sharing scientific knowledge through publications is not sufficient to meet contemporary demands that require not only the results but also data, knowledge, and skills to analyze the data. E-infrastructures are key in facilitating access to data and providing the framework for collaboration. Here we discuss the importance of e-infrastructures of public interest and the lack of long-term funding policies. We present the example of Brazil's speciesLink network, an e-infrastructure that provides free and open access to biodiversity primary data and associated tools. SpeciesLink currently integrates 382 datasets from 135 national institutions and 13 institutions from abroad, openly sharing ~7.4 million records, 94% of which are associated to voucher specimens. Just as important as the data is the network of data providers and users. In 2014, more than 95% of its users were from Brazil, demonstrating the importance of local e-infrastructures in enabling and promoting local use of biodiversity data and knowledge. From the outset, speciesLink has been sustained through project-based funding, normally public grants for 2–4-year periods. In between projects , there are short-term crises in trying to keep the system operational, a fact that has also been observed in global biodiversity portals, as well as in social and physical sciences platforms and even in computing services portals. In the last decade, the open access movement propelled the development of many web platforms for sharing data. Adequate policies unfortunately did not follow the same tempo, and now many initiatives may perish.
... O compartilhamento de dados, em especial, caracteriza-se como um aspecto da colaboração científica em franca expansão, carreado pela crescente massa de dados gerados por métodos modernos de extração, manipulação e armazenamento, facilitados pela nova geração de infraestruturas de informação e comunicação e ferramentas baseadas na internet, permitindo ampliar ainda mais o processo de pesquisa criando assim novos formatos e dinâmicas de produção coletiva em ciência, tecnologia e inovação (CT&I). Para David (2006), a colaboração científica e tecnológica é cada vez mais criticamente dependente do acesso e do compartilhamento de dados de pesquisa. ...
... It should be noted that research processes are primarily human rather than mechanistic in nature; that is the primary activities are concerned with the interactions of people rather than machines [18]. Although collaboration is heavily promoted in e-science and IT is found to have significant potential to facilitate cooperative research, actual collaborative research processes have been difficult to achieve in practice and IT should be evaluated carefully to determine best practices [19,20]. In this context, Table 1 lists the processes that are seen as grounds of collaborative research together with the agreement of IT usage in these processes according to previous studies. ...
Collaborative research includes research activities conducted by a group of people working at different locations and has become a hot issue due to the effects of globalization and advances in information technology (IT). The aim of this study is to design, develop, implement and evaluate an IT environment to better manage the standard processes of a collaborative research by providing more efficient use of the resources. Inspired by the studies in the literature, the basic steps and requirements of a typical collaborative research are identified and the related process flow diagram is generated. Next a Web 2.0 supported business process management (BPM) environment is developed in the direction of the process flow diagram to support collaborative researches. A commercial BPM system is used to automate and monitor the processes, whereas Web 2.0 platform is used for communications management, workspace sharing and data collection. The proposed environment is experimented by a case study conducted with a group of researchers; its performance is evaluated and directions for improvements are identified. It is concluded that in general the Web 2.0 supported BPM environment is functional, reliable and useful for collaborative research. The environment is found to be more suitable for research support processes compared to basic research processes.
... O compartilhamento de dados, em especial, caracteriza-se como um aspecto da colaboração científica em franca expansão, carreado pela crescente massa de dados gerados por métodos modernos de extração, manipulação e armazenamento, facilitados pela nova geração de infraestruturas de informação e comunicação e ferramentas baseadas na internet, permitindo ampliar ainda mais o processo de pesquisa criando assim novos formatos e dinâmicas de produção coletiva em ciência, tecnologia e inovação (CT&I). Para David (2006), a colaboração científica e tecnológica é cada vez mais criticamente dependente do acesso e do compartilhamento de dados de pesquisa. ...
A falta de indexação dos títulos de revistas científicas de Ciências Humanas e Sociais em bases de dados comerciais restringe a investigação sobre seu impacto. O Acesso Aberto, ferramentas como o Google Scholar (GS) e aplicativos de processamento de dados permitem a busca e a recuperação de citações de artigos, sinalizando uma alternativa para os estudos sobre o impacto da produção científica publicada nessas áreas. Este estudo apresenta um projeto piloto de compartilhamento de dados de citações de periódicos para a investigação colaborativa por parte da comunidade de cientometria brasileira com o objetivo de incentivar uma maior utilização do GS para fins bibliométricos.
... 3 Referem-se a um conjunto de tecnologias emergentes que suportam o compartilhamento em larga escala de recursos computacionais ou mediados por computadores através de grupos distribuídos ou fracamente coordenados, por vezes denominados organizações virtuais. Isso é possível devido à alta taxa de processamento, à interoperabilidade e à confiabilidade que essas tecnologias em princípio garantem (compilado a partir deDavid (2004) e de informações editoriais do Journal of Grid Computing). 4 São exemplos as ciências da sustentabilidade, nanociências e nanotecnologias, bioinformática, bioengenharia, biotecnologias e as ômicas. Estas últimas referem-se ao conjunto de campos e subcampos de estudo em biologia integrativa, que aplica a abordagem de sistemas à relação entre ciência e medicina. ...
This paper discusses how research education is influenced by the dynamics of knowledge production and use within a given context of application. It is argued that the graduate policy in Brazil, driven to academic career and performance as determined by Capes' evaluation model, does not enable the development of new competences and roles expected from doctorate holders in the current scenario marked by the intensification of relations and exchanges within scientific, economic and cultural realms, both nationally and mainly internationally.
... While these environments remain at the forefront of collaborative science, they are essentially highly specialized stovepiped solutions. This one-off design approach is the root cause of why there has been minimal success in leveraging subsystems and components of these collaborative infrastructures in other science contexts [13]. ...
Modern scientific software is daunting in its diversity and complexity. From massively parallel simulations running on the world's largest supercomputers, to visualizations and user support environments that manage ever growing complex data collections, the challenges for software engineers are plentiful. While high performance simulators are necessarily specialized codes to maximize performance on specific supercomputer architectures, we argue the vast majority of supporting infrastructure, data management and analysis tools can leverage commodity open source and component-based technologies. This approach can significantly drive down the effort and costs of building complex, collaborative scientific user environments, as well as increase their reliability and extensibility. In this paper we describe our experiences in creating an initial user environment for scientists involved in modeling the detailed effects of climate change on the environment of selected geographical regions. Our approach composes the user environment using the Velo scientific knowledge management platform and the MeDICi Integration Framework for scientific workflows. These established platforms leverage component-based technologies and extend commodity open source platforms with abstractions and capabilities that make them amenable for broad use in science. Using this approach we were able to deliver an operational user environment capable of running thousands of simulations in a 7 month period, and achieve significant software reuse.
... These tensions between the vision of e-Science and the practice of research have given rise to a series of investigations (cf Wouters and Bealieu 2006;Zimmerman 2008;Zimmerman et al. 2009;Olson et al. 2008a;Faniel and Zimmerman 2011;Dutton and Jeffreys 2010) stressing the problematic nature of data sharing and reuse from different communities of practicefrom identifying the institutional arrangements that may mitigate against this vision (David and Spence 2010;David 2006;Welsh et al. 2006), to the ethical issues involved and the conflicting requirements placed upon researchers by different institutional concerns (Carusi and Jirotka 2009) to complex legal challenges such as ownership of images (Piper and Vaver 2010;D'Agostino etc al 2008) or issues of authorship (Pila 2009). Faniel and Jacobsen (2010) note that before data generated by others can be confidently reused, scientists need to assess the data's relevance, such that it may be understood and that the source may be trusted. ...
This paper discusses the interrelationship between e-Science and CSCW in terms of key substantive, methodological and conceptual innovations made in both fields. In so doing, we hope to draw out the existing relationship between CSCW and e-Science research, and to map out some key future challenges where the two areas of research may become more closely aligned. In considering what may be required to draw the two more closely together, the paper focuses primarily on investigations that have been undertaken in two dedicated initiatives into e-Science, along with the key issues emerging from these studies.
... This excerpt from the Atkins Report emphasizes the way in which ineffective management practices can waste resources and jeopardize large-scale computational research centers and collaborative environments. The management or such research centers should not be taken lightly -especially since the social and organizational elements may be the "hardest part" of these endeavors (David 2006). While the technical issues are critically important, it is equally important not to neglect the organizational and social elements. ...
We present the following findings to a panel of CI center executives, senior organizational scholars, and CI policymakers in an NSF-sponsored “Managing CI Centers” workshop, and asked them to critically scrutinize and comment on these findings.(1) CI Centers as Cyberinfrastructure “Stewards”: To date, the bulk of studies into organizing around cyberinfrastructure focus on project teams. Our research extends this work by situating these project teams within their organizational contexts, and focusing on an essential role played by CI centers, namely, that of cyberinfrastructure steward. This form of stewardship entails combining a service ethos with a responsibility for sustaining elements of a digital infrastructure over the long term. This is accomplished through the coordination of knowledge resources (e.g., people, hardware, software, documents) across projects. As stewards of cyberinfrastructure, CI centers are positioned centrally within contemporary scientific and technological networks. Accordingly, we also propose that CI centers, through their position at a cyberinfrastructure network’s “structural fold," effectively enable cyberinfrastructure innovation over time.(2) CI Center Leaders as Entrepreneurs: Leadership in CI centers is usually associated with project management. Our research has found that, in practice, CI center leadership more accurately resembles entrepreneurship. CI center leaders come from a variety of backgrounds with diverse dispositions. We find that the attention of CI center leaders is a critical element of cyberinfrastructure evolution.(3) Resource scarcity and Cyberinfrastructure Innovation: The single most important concern of CI center leaders involves access to the appropriate resources - both funding and human resources - to enable them to innovate. Although, in their view, more resources enable greater innovation - our findings indicate that this is not the whole picture. We find that the interplay of resource abundance and resource scarcity result in a sort of “generative tension” that fosters innovation.(4) Scientific Software Ecosystems: Software is a critical element of cyberinfrastructure. Our research has examined the production of software in science and compared it with both commercial software production and production in the open-source software communities. Software development in CI centers, whether for internal or external use, largely takes place in relatively small, cohesive groups known as “software projects”. Increasingly, though, CI centers are looking to participate in “software communities” either by attracting outside contributors or, less frequently, by contributing to existing software communities. Yet our work also shows a third role, as yet relatively unexplored in science: the software ecosystem steward, working at the broader community level to establish incentives, collaboration infrastructure, and governance for coordinated development.(5) Assessing CI Center Impact: The impact of CI centers is often invisible but it is broad and far-reaching - resulting in everything from technology innovation (like key elements of the Internet) to groundbreaking science in multiple disciplines. However, because of the invisibility of infrastructure, assessing their contributions is one of the critical challenges for CI centers and policymakers. While difficult, fair assessment is imperative when navigating various institutional arrangements, acquiring resources, and comparing potential cyberinfrastructure investments that will shape future scientific patterns of action.
... Reconciling the emerging cyberinfrastructure with social aspects of the scientific process may be extremely challenging (David, 2005). The design of new ICT infrastructures and applications will continue to benefit from research on the social aspects of collaboration. ...
... Unfortunately, seldom have the social and the technological received the same level of attention. While technological progress goes fast to produce advanced software and hardware to sustain scientific research, social arrangements enabling organizations, groups and individuals to collaborate better and in a more affordable manner improve at a much slower rate (David, 2005). David put the question in quite clear terms, by contending that the complex demands for suitable institutional infrastructures have been downplayed, as they were deemed simpler to A LIS collaboratory address than technological requirements, but indeed they may prove much harder to tackle. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of a collaboratory as a virtual learning community and discuss its significance to support collaboration between library and information science (LIS) researchers and practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach
The LIS literature describes various forms of inter‐institutional collaboration involving librarians and information professionals, but there is an apparent lack of documented cases of collaboratories involving LIS practitioners and researchers. The paper draws from the literature about collaboratories in the fields of social informatics and information systems and describes the notion of collaboratory, its characteristics and main functions.
Findings
It is argued that a LIS collaboratory in the form of a virtual learning community has the potential to provide researchers and practitioners the opportunity to bring in and integrate their respective knowledge, expertise and connections, as well as expand participation of practitioners in research projects. Another claim is that this virtual learning community may fill a critical niche for small institutions as LIS schools and practitioners, and give them the opportunity to choose and work together on relevant research projects. While the prospect of LIS collaboratory looks promising, the challenges to building one need not be overlooked, in particular working at distance and crossing institutional boundaries. More research is needed on the socio‐organizational issues that can influence collaboration between LIS researchers and practitioners.
Research limitations/implications
The discussion is based on the author's review of the literature and observations.
Originality/value
The notion of collaboratory is still new to the LIS field. This paper offers the opportunity to trigger a new discussion on collaboration between researchers and practitioners and the potential of collaboratories to support new forms of collaboration.
... os de investigación, laboratorios y grupos por proyecto en Alemania, pero además lleva a cabo un seminario anual para incrementar la conciencia sobre los métodos y tecnologías relacionados con e-Ciencia. El Instituto también dirigió y firmó la declaración de Berlín sobre acceso abierto al conocimiento en las ciencias y las humanidades (BMBF, 2008).David, 2005) y adapta la taxonomía de David y Spencer sobre las actividades de e-Ciencia (David, quehacer científico, sin embargo reducir e-Ciencia sólo a estas dos tecnologías elimina las aplicaciones actuales que apoyan la labor cotidiana de los científicos.Bikjer and Pinch, 1987). Dicha flexibilidad interpretativa encuentra la dificultad de pare ...
Las Tecnologías de la Información y de la Comunicación (TIC) han sido objeto de análisis de los investigadores de la comunicación desde muy diversas perspectivas. Sin embargo, las se han hecho presente en diferentes aspectos de la vida social incluyendo la ciencia misma, por lo que la relación investigación y TIC también es un área cuyo estudio está cobrando creciente importancia. Las iniciativas internacionales para crear infraestructura adecuada que apoye los procesos de producción de conocimiento científico (eScience) se enfrentan no solo a desafíos técnicos, sino también sociales por las implicaciones en las dinámicas de trabajo colaborativo y comunicación de los investigadores. En el caso de las Ciencias de la Comunicación se supondría cierta familiaridad de los investigadores con respecto al uso de las TIC, sin embargo iniciativas para el desarrollo de infraestructura requieren replantearse si este supuesto es una realidad y así, implementar soluciones adecuadas para los investigadores. Este trabajo explora desde una perspectiva empírica, las actuales prácticas, actitudes y requerimientos de una comunidad institucionalizada de investigadores de la comunicación en México. Mediante el uso de entrevistas a profundidad, una encuesta y el análisis de sitios de internet, se identificaron el uso de email, chats y procesadores de palabras como herramientas de trabajo y colaboración usados cotidianamente. Sin embargo el uso de repositorios y plataformas para la publicación de datos primarios, el intercambio de resultados parciales y la publicación en línea muestran notables signos de resistencia. De igual manera, ciertas condiciones institucionales se ven reflejadas en las actitudes de los investigadores, ya que las dinámicas establecidas fortalecen ciclos de trabajo alrededor de la interacción cara-a-cara.
... This excerpt from the Atkins Report emphasizes the way in which ineffective management practices can waste resources and jeopardize large-scale high-performance computing (HPC) research centers and collaborative environments. The management or such research centers should not be taken lightly – especially since the social and organizational elements may be the " hardest part " of these endeavors (David 2006). While the technical issues are critically important, it is equally important not to neglect the organizational and social elements. ...
To deliver consistently, high performance computing (HPC) centers must execute in both technical and organizational domains. While the technical domain certainly involves formidable challenges, scholars have indicated that organizational challenges in HPC can be equally complex and problematic. HPC centers represent a unique form of organizing and there is very little research into the way they are managed and how this management can potentially be improved.
In this paper, we present findings from an in-depth exploratory study of ten diverse HPC centers. Drawing a variety of traditions in organizational scholarship, we identify three domains that present significant management challenges for HPC centers: (1) governance; (2) resource acquisition and allocation; and (3) infrastructural innovation and collaboration. We conclude by detailing subsequent steps in this research program.
... The success of SciSourcing projects depends largely on distributed contribution by volunteers, just as much as they rely on the technical infrastructure [7]. To date, the question of why people contribute to SciSourcing projects has been largely overlooked. ...
... Under such constraints a tension emerges between goals for inclusion and readiness to adopt novel IT across differently prepared scientific fields. This is true both from the 'hard' and 'soft' foundations of CI (David 2004): computing and network capacity on the one hand and on the other the community's experience collaborating or willingness to share data. From the perspective of CI deployment, the data of some fields are more readily available than others for federation. ...
E-social science involves the long-term provision of human services and information technology to support cyber-enabled forms of social science research. In implementing across an extended timescale, the social sciences will confront difficulties comparable to those observed in the natural sciences, including sustainability, extensibility, and usability of systems. In this paper we draw on our prior and ongoing comparative social studies of cyberinfrastructure (CI) in the natural sciences to inform policy, planning and implementation of e-social science. We argue that in their efforts to build CI, social scientists can learn from the experiences of natural science communities. Specifically, we identify three primary concerns and describe exemplary tensions social scientists are likely to encounter as they design CI for the long-term. We conclude by exploring the potential for a "latecomer" advantage where social scientists may overcome tensions of designing CI for the long-term through delayed adoption as socio-technical arrangements stabilize.
... The field of computer-supported cooperative work (Grudin, 1994) is long established as fundamentally interdisciplinary. The KDI (Cummings & Kiesler, 2003) study reviews some of the social barriers to distributed collaboration (Young, 2004) and more recently Paul David has written explicitly about the topic of technological, institutional, and social infrastructure issues of e-science (David, 2004). David elaborates on the assertion that fulfilling the promise of e-science (CI-enhanced science) will require a lot more than innovation in technology and in the design on new systems and tools by scientists and their organizations. ...
This paper discusses the relationship between the emergent cyberinfrastructure movement and the theme of this conference, the next wave of collaboration in knowledge communities. The paper reviews techno-logical and programmatic trends that provide the basis for a cyberinfrastructure movement, highlights the findings of an NSF advisory panel on the subject, and sketches a vision of revolutionary and broad impact on the activities of knowledge communities broadly defined. Cyberinfrastructure-enhanced research and learning communities are emerging just as many knowledge-based activities are becoming more collaborative, multidisciplinary, geographically distributed, inter-institutional, and increasingly, international. We are at an inflection point driven by the push of the raw ca-pacity of the technology and better understanding of the new social forms it enables; and the pull for more effectiveness in addressing critical priorities for advances in science and engineering, economic prosper-ity, vibrant civil society, and national security.
Puisant ses analyses et ses exemples dans des champs scientifiques variés, cet ouvrage (dont l’original est paru en 2015 chez MIT Press) offre une étude inédite des utilisations des données au sein des infrastructures de la connaissance – utilisations qui varient largement d’une discipline à l’autre. Bien que le big data ait régulièrement les honneurs de la presse des deux côtés de l’Atlantique, Christine L. Borgman met en évidence qu’il vaut mieux disposer des bonnes données qu’en avoir beaucoup. Elle montre également que les little data peuvent s’avérer aussi précieuses que les big data, et, que, dans bien des cas, il n’y a aucune donnée, parce que les informations pertinentes n’existent pas, sont introuvables ou sont indisponibles… Au travers d’études de cas pratiques issus d’horizons divers, Christine L. Borgman met aussi en lumière que les données n’ont ni valeur ni signification isolément : elles s’inscrivent au sein d’une infrastructure de la connaissance, c’est-à-dire d’un écosystème de personnes, de pratiques, de technologies, d’institutions, d’objets matériels et de relations. Pour l’autrice, gérer les données et les exploiter sur le long terme requiert ainsi des investissements massifs dans ces infrastructures de la connaissance. L’avenir de la recherche, dans un monde en réseau, en dépend.
As a contribution to the Open Science debate, the present paper focuses on a long-standing scientific genre, laboratory protocols, and compares a selection of protocols from the collaborative OpenWetWare website with traditional print protocols, in order to highlight their differences: what new properties does the Web-mediated genre possess, and to what extent do these new features modify or call into question the defining features of the original genre? The choice of the protocol genre stemmed from the following hypothesis: lab protocols are a rigidly formatted genre, exhibiting a minimal amount of variability from one print realization to another; it was therefore felt that any observable differences between the offline and online versions could be more reliably attributed to the web context than would be the case with a genre that possessed greater inherent flexibility. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a characterization of the traditional protocol genre, with which the web-mediated protocols can then be compared. After a brief presentation of the corpus (section 3), the comparative analysis in section 4 then focuses on three features that are widely considered to be central in genre characterization (Giltrow/Stein 2009): structure, communicative purpose, and linguistic form.
En los últimos años, la ciencia abierta ha capturado gran interés por parte de científicos, hacedores de políticas y agencias de desarrollo internacional, en gran parte debido a los beneficios prometidos por las nuevas prácticas. Sin embargo, a medida que las ideas de ciencia abierta se transforman en iniciativas concretas, comienzan a enfrentar desafíos que pueden retrasar y/o impedir su implementación. Entre ellos se incluyen: la ausencia de conocimiento y/o capacidades para realizar nuevas prácticas, barreras normativas o institucionales que impiden avanzar en la apertura, y falta de infraestructura que puede desalentar su adopción. Este trabajo sistematiza los desafíos que surgen en las prácticas de ciencia abierta con el fin de informar el desarrollo de futuras políticas de ciencia y tecnología que faciliten su avance en la región.
This research study compares the internal and external interoperability of digital infrastructures across two cyberinfrastructure organizations. Internal interoperability refers to the work that goes into developing seamless relations to align people and resources for a CI provision whereas external interoperability refers to the linkages the CI provision makes to the larger institutional ecology of science. The case study is designed to look at the governance of digital infrastructures to understand policy decisions in relation to three institutional aspects of science: funding, publication norms, and training and professionalization. Initial findings suggest that internal interoperability is similar for both digital infrastructures whereas external interoperability differs and is shaped by the domain of science that is stewarding the development of the provision. The study concludes by suggesting that linking digital infrastructure development to the components of science practice may be a starting point to understand how they become embedded (or not) in scientific work. Copyright
This chapter introduces the interrelated concepts of e-Research and e-Mentoring, reviews some recent works related to them, and discusses their importance in a global, Internet-based world. In this chapter, a conceptual framework is proposed to distinguish among the concepts of e-Research, e-Science, and Cyberinfrastructure, which are frequently used synonymously in the existing literature. Then, some issues related to e-Mentoring are discussed, including its characteristics, benefits, challenges, and a review of different Web 2.0 tools that can facilitate and promote e-Mentoring practices in most research organizations. Some personal experiences in e-Mentoring are then related. These experiences involve different universities and international programs, and their study points out several key factors of a successful e-Mentoring collaboration.
Within Australia there is a growing interest in e-research and the use of cyberinfrastructure. There is also increasing recognition that the use of cyberinfrastructure is often inhibited, not by technical issues, but by socalled ‘soft’ issues, such as those related to work practices, intellectual property issues, the nature of research collaboration, and institutional imperatives. This paper reports on aspects of DART (Dataset Acquisition, Accessibility and Annotation e-Research Technologies), a current e-research project, specifically issues related to the broader questions of uptake and use of repositories by researchers. The paper concludes by discussing implications for libraries and for the design and promotion of repositories.
The paper studies the transition to ICT‐based support systems for scientific research. These systems currently attempt the transition from the project stage to the more permanent stage of an infrastructure. The transition leads to several challenges, including in the area of establishing adequate governance regimes, which not all projects master successfully. Studying a set of cases from Europe and America, we look at patterns in the size and scope of the undertakings, embeddedness in user communities, aims and responsibilities, mechanisms of coordination, forms of governance, and time horizon and funding. We find that, though configurations and landscapes are somewhat diverse, successful projects typically follow distinctive paths, either large‐scale or small‐scale, and become what we term ‘stable metaorganizations’ or ‘established communities.’
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to study collaborative research in general and identify its characteristics, advantages and disadvantages by conglomerating various views and ideas from the literature and from expert opinion research. Second, to determine the importance of and attitudes toward the usage of information technology (IT) in collaborative research projects.
Design/methodology/approach
Initially, an extensive literature review and ten in‐depth interviews have been conducted to determine the identifying characteristics of collaborative research. Consequently, a questionnaire is used as the major data collection tool to assess academicians' opinions about collaborative research and attitudes toward IT utilization in such studies.
Findings
Collaborative research has been most distinctively defined with the concepts of teamwork, knowledge and experience sharing and direct and continuous communication. Increased visibility and recognition of such projects and enhanced access to various resources have also been pinpointed as important advantages. Academicians have shown a highly positive tendency to utilize IT and adopt IT tools that will enhance convenience and communication and contribute to the conduction of various basic and support processes of collaborative research projects.
Research limitations/implications
The major implication of this research is the general need for more collaborative research projects in academia and the necessity to develop and employ various IT tools that can be used in such studies. Similar studies can be done with larger sample sizes or across various contexts, for comparative purposes, to overcome the limitations of the study.
Originality/value
In this paper, the dispersed literature about collaborative research has been assembled and a unified scope has been drawn around the concept. Attitudes toward collaborative research and the potential value of utilizing IT in such projects, which has been studied at an inadequate level in the literature, have been evaluated comprehensively from the perspective of academicians.
Mechatronic systems reconfigure the structure of their software architecture, e.g., to avoid hazardous situations or to optimize operational conditions like minimizing their energy consumption. As software architectures are typically build on components, reconfiguration actions need to respect the component structure. This structure should be hierarchical to enable encapsulated components. While many reconfiguration approaches for embedded real-time systems allow the use of hierarchically embedded components, i.e., horizontal composition, none of them offers a modeling and verification solution to take hierarchical composition, i.e., encapsulation, into account. In this paper, we present an extension to our existing modeling language, \muml, to enable safe hierarchical reconfigurations. The two main extensions are (a) an adapted variant of the two-phase commit protocol to initiate reconfigurations which maintain component encapsulation and (b) a timed model checking verification approach for instances of our model. We illustrate our approach on a case study in the area of smart railway systems by showing two different use cases of our approach and the verification of their safety properties.
This paper first explores some of the reasons why collaboration is becoming increasingly important in supporting scientific data curation, digital preservation initiatives and institutional repository development. It then investigates the concepts of trust and control used in the organisation science literature and attempts to apply them to the work on trustworthy repositories being carried out by various international initiatives.
The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore academic and ethical challenges with Participatory Community Research (PCR) in the context where many universities and researchers are moving to embrace new e-Research infrastructure. A case study of a project focussing on developing electronic capacity in a deprived community in Africa is used to problematize issues. E-Research also brings its own challenges for PCR, such as: a need to clearly understand the dynamics of community-based research and ethics and ethical frameworks that are responsive to this; the development of new legal ownership and access rights; the need for appropriately sensitive institutional commitment to the long-term maintenance of repositories to support continued data storage and curation; and the formation of adaptive, inter-organizational research teams which are comfortable with community and electronic interactions.
Este artigo discute como a formação de pesquisadores é influenciada pela dinâmica de produção e uso do conhecimento num determinado contexto de aplicação. Desenvolve-se o argumento de que a política de pós-graduação no Brasil, orientada à carreira e ao desempenho acadêmico, como impõe o modelo de avaliação da Capes, não é capaz de atender às novas competências e papéis esperados dos doutores no atual cenário de intensificação das relações e do intercâmbio científico, econômico e cultural no âmbito nacional e, especialmente, internacional.
Why and how do researchers collaborate, share knowledge resources, data, and expertise? What kinds of infrastructures and services do they use, and what do they need for the future enhancement of collaborative research practices? The chapter focuses on existing and potential eResearch from a "user" perspective. Drawing on a study of ICT-enhanced research practices and needs conducted at seven Australian universities, it discusses how researchers engage with distributed research and use ICT for collaboration. Findings show significant current engagement of the majority of researchers in collaborative research, their acknowledgement of the potential of eResearch, and researchers' general willingness to engage in collaborative eResearch. While there are some essential differences in the collaboration practices of research students and academics and between practices and challenges in different disciplinary domains, researchers who are more involved in collaborative research also adopt eResearch more extensively, more often use ICT-enhanced collaboration tools, share more of their data, and more often disseminate their findings via digital media.
Purpose - This paper considers the collaborative efforts of developing a Grid computing infrastructure within problem-focused, distributed and multi-disciplinary projects – which we term Interventionist Grid Development Projects – involving commercial, academic and public collaborators. Such projects present distinctive challenges which have been neglected by existing eScience research and IS literature. The paper defines a research framework for understanding and evaluating the social, political and collaborative challenges of such projects.
Design/methodology/approach - The paper develops a research framework which extends Orlikowski and Gash’s (1994) concept of Technological Frames to consider two additional frames specific to such Grid projects; Bureaucratic Frames and Collaborator Frames. These are used to analyse a case study of a Grid development project within Healthcare which aimed to deploy a European data-Grid of medical images to facilitate collaboration and communication between clinicians across the EU.
Findings - That Grids are shaped to a significant degree by the collaborative practices involved in their construction, and that for projects involving commercial and public partners such collaboration is inhibited by the differing interpretive frames adopted by the different relevant groups.
Research limitations/implications - The paper is limited by the nature of the Grid development project studied, and the subsequent availability of research subjects.
Practical implications - The paper provides those involved in such projects, or in policy around such Grid developments, with a practical framework by which to evaluate collaborations and their impact on the emergent Grid. Further, the paper presents lessons for future such Interventionist Grid projects.
Originality/value - This is a new area for research but one which is becoming increasingly important as data-intensive computing begins to emerge as foundational to many collaborative sciences and enterprises. The work builds upon significant literature in eScience and IS drawing into this new domain. The research framework developed here, drawn from the IS literature, begins a new stream of systems development research with a distinct focus on bureaucracy, collaboration and technology within such Interventionist Grid development projects.
this score have emerged more strongly in recent years among academic lawyers and economists in the US The Public Domain
Concerns about the recent thrust of public policy on this score have emerged more
strongly in recent years among academic lawyers and economists in the US. See,
e.g., James Boyle (ed.) (2003) The Public Domain. Law and Contemporary Problems
66:1&2 (Special Issue of the Collected Papers from the Duke University Conference,
held November 2001); J. H. Reichman and P. F. Uhlir (2003) A Contractually
Reconstructed Research Commons for Scientific Data in a Highly Protectionist
Intellectual Property Environment. Law and Contemporary Problems 66:1&2, pp.
But, save for the details, they share the same perspectives and approach to constructing 'collaboration spaces' and broadening the information commons as that found in
The particular proposals that are briefly indicated here are those put forward by
David and Spence, Towards Institutional Infrastructures for e-Science (2003). But,
save for the details, they share the same perspectives and approach to constructing
'collaboration spaces' and broadening the information commons as that found in J.H.
Reichman and P.F. Uhlir (2003) A Contractually Reconstructed Research Commons
for Scientific Data in a Highly Protectionist Intellectual Property Environment. Law
and Contemporary Problems 66, pp. 315–462.