Kevin Crowston's research while affiliated with Syracuse University and other places
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Publications (296)
In response to the COVID-19 crises, many local TV newsrooms decided to have employees work from home (WFH) or the field rather than from the newsroom. From a review of research on telework, we identified possible impacts of WFH on worker effectiveness, conceptualized as including output, individual satisfaction and growth, and group well-being. Fro...
Many would argue that artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a technology but represents a paradigmatic shift in the relationship between humans and machines. Much of the literature assumes that AI-powered practices are substantially different and profoundly changes organizational structures, communication, affordances, and ecosystems. However, r...
Scholars across disciplines increasingly hear calls for more open and collaborative approaches to scientific research. The concept of Open Innovation in Science (OIS) provides a framework that integrates dispersed research efforts aiming to understand the antecedents, contingencies, and consequences of applying open and collaborative research pract...
The observation of gravitational waves is hindered by the presence of transient noise (glitches). We study data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO detectors, and identify new glitch classes: fast scattering/crown and low-frequency blips. Using training sets assembled by monitoring of the state of the detector, and by citizen-science...
DataONE, funded from 2009-2019 by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is an early example of a large-scale project that built both a cyberinfrastructure and culture of data discovery, sharing, and reuse. DataONE used a Working Group model, where a diverse group of participants collaborated on targeted research and development activities to achiev...
The observation of gravitational waves is hindered by the presence of transient noise (glitches). We study data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO detectors, and identify new glitch classes. Using training sets assembled by monitoring of the state of the detector, and by citizen-science volunteers, we update the Gravity Spy machine-l...
Purpose
This paper explores how task characteristics in terms of trigger type and task topic influence individual participation in community-based free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development by considering participation in individual tasks rather than entire projects.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative study was designed using choo...
GitLab is a software company that works “all remote” at the scale of more than 1000 employees located in more than 60 countries. GitLab has no physical office and its employees can work from anywhere they choose. Any step of the organizational life of a GitLab employee (e.g., hiring, onboarding and firing) is performed remotely, except for a yearly...
In this conceptual article, we present a theory of leadership in self-managing virtual teams. We describe leadership in this setting as a process that results in the creation, reinforcement, and evolution of shared mental models and shared norms that influence team member behavior toward the successful accomplishment of shared goals. We distinguish...
Peer production projects involve people in many tasks, from editing articles to analyzing datasets. To facilitate mastery of these practices, projects offer a number of learning resources, ranging from project-defined FAQsto individually-oriented search tools and communal discussion boards. However, it is not clear which project resources best supp...
With the increasing ability to generate actionable insight from data, the field of data science has seen significant growth. As more teams develop data science solutions, the analytical code they develop will need to be enhanced in the future, by an existing or a new team member. Thus, the importance of being able to easily maintain and enhance the...
This chapter provides a framework for integrating and applying the principles and strategies for effective team science that are described in this volume. The framework, called Collaboration Planning, aims to guide a deliberative approach to assess and plan for ten key influences on both scientific and collaborative success. These influences range...
We demonstrate MIDST, a system we developed to support stigmergic coordination in data-science teams, that is, coordination supported by a shared work product. To improve coordination, the system supports modularization of an analysis as a workflow, distributed code development and sharing and tracking of task status through a web application.
We present a conceptual framework for socio-technical affordances for stigmergic coordination, that is, coordination supported by a shared work product. Based on research on free/libre open source software development, we theorize that stigmergic coordination depends on three sets of socio-technical affordances: the visibility and combinability of...
Existing literature points to scaffolded training as an effective yet resource-intensive approach to help newcomers learn and stay motivated. Experts need to select relevant learning materials and continuously assess learners' progress. Peer production communities such as Wikipedia and Open Source Software Development projects face the additional p...
We present the design of a citizen science system that uses machine learning to guide the presentation of image classification tasks to newcomers to help them more quickly learn how to do the task while still contributing to the work of the project. A Bayesian model for tracking volunteer learning for training with tasks with uncertain outcomes is...
This paper presents a case study of an online citizen science project that attempted to involve volunteers in tasks with multiple dependencies including analyzing bulk data as well as interpreting data and writing a paper for publication. Tasks with more dependencies call for more elaborate coordination mechanisms. However, the relationship between...
The observation of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences by LIGO and Virgo has begun a new era in astronomy. A critical challenge in making detections is determining whether loud transient features in the data are caused by gravitational waves or by instrumental or environmental sources. The citizen-science project Gravity Spy has be...
The observation of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences by LIGO and Virgo has begun a new era in astronomy. A critical challenge in making detections is determining whether loud transient features in the data are caused by gravitational waves or by instrumental or environmental sources. The citizen-science project \emph{Gravity Spy}...
Virtual collaborations bring together people who must work together despite having varied access to and understanding of the work at hand. In many cases, the collaborations are technology supported, meaning that the work is done through shared documents. We develop a framework articulating the characteristics of documents supporting collaborators w...
Members of highly-distributed groups in online production communities face challenges in achieving coordinated action. Existing CSCW research highlights the importance of shared language and artifacts when coordinating actions in such settings. To better understand how such shared language and artifacts are, not only a guide for, but also a result...
Researchers studying user behaviors in online communities often conduct analyses of user interaction data recorded in system logs e.g., an edit in Wikipedia. Such analysis relies on collating interactions by a unique identifier such as a user ID. However, if users can contribute without being logged-in (i.e., anonymously) analysis of interaction da...
Increasingly, citizen scientists do work beyond the primary goal of the project (i.e., advanced work) such as writing articles. These activities often take place in discussion boards and have a set of linguistic norms for contributing. For newcomers, learning this language presents a challenge since there are no formal opportunities for them to lea...
We look for evidence of stigmergic coordination (i.e., coordination mediated by changes to a shared work product) in the context of Wikipedia. Using a novel approach to identifying edits to the same part of a Wikipedia article, we show that a majority of edits to two example articles are not associated with discussion on the article Talk page, sugg...
re-examination of existing survey data to test attitudes and perceptions of scientists to data re-use.
A London School of Economics 'Impact of Social Sciences' blog: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/03/20/what-factors-do-scientists-perceive-as-promoting-or-hindering-scientific-data-reuse/
This study examines the relative efficacy of citizen science recruitment messages appealing to four motivations that were derived from previous research on motives for participation in citizen-science projects. We report on an experiment (N=36,513) that compared the response to email messages designed to appeal to these four motives for participati...
This all-day workshop aims to promote convergence among its participants on research related to working with intelligent machines. We define intelligent machines as both material (e.g., robots) and immaterial (e.g., algorithms) computing technologies that can be characterized by autonomy, the ability to learn, and the ability to interact with other...
The value of sharing scientific research data is widely appreciated, but factors that hinder or prompt the reuse of data remain poorly understood. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action, we test the relationship between the beliefs and attitudes of scientists towards data reuse, and their self-reported data reuse behaviour. To do so, we used existing...
We examine the relationship between communications by core and peripheral members and Free/Libre Open Source Software project success. The study uses data from 74 projects in the Apache Software Foundation Incubator. We conceptualize project success in terms of success building a community, as assessed by graduation from the Incubator. We compare s...
In 2004 a collaborative research team based at Syracuse University and Elon University began collecting and sharing data in order to understand how free/libre open source software (FLOSS) is made. Embodying some of the same FLOSS ethos, this team created a public-facing repository for their own data and analyses and encouraged other researchers to...
The explosion of data available from online systems such as social media is creating a wealth of trace data, that is, data that record evidence of human activity. The volume of data available offers great potential to advance social and behavioural science research. However, the data are of a very different kind than more conventional social and be...
Objective: To support the assessment and improvement of research data management (RDM) practices to increase its reliability, this paper describes the development of a capability maturity model (CMM) for RDM. Improved RDM is now a critical need, but low awareness of – or lack of – data management is still common among research projects. Methods: A...
User-generated content (UGC) projects involve large numbers of mostly unpaid contributors collaborating to create content. Motivation for such contributions has been an active area of research. In prior research, motivation for contribution to UGC has been considered a single, static and individual phenomenon. In this paper, we argue that it is ins...
Historically, organizations owned and controlled the information technologies (IT) their employees used: telephone, inter-office memos, mainframes and timesharing systems. Today, employees often want to use their own IT: not only personal smart phones and tablets, but also Twitter and Google Docs. This new trend can diversify and extend enterprise...
(abridged for arXiv) With the first direct detection of gravitational waves, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has initiated a new field of astronomy by providing an alternate means of sensing the universe. The extreme sensitivity required to make such detections is achieved through exquisite isolation of all s...
Two key problems for crowd-sourcing systems are motivating contributions from participants and ensuring the quality of these contributions. Games have been suggested as a motivational approach to encourage contribution, but attracting participation through game play rather than intrinsic interest raises concerns about the quality of the contributio...
Although participation of citizen scientists is critical for a success of citizen science projects (a distinctive form of crowdsourcing), little attention has been paid to what types of messages can effectively recruit citizen scientists. Derived from previous studies on citizen scientists' motivations, we created and sent participants one of four...
Gravity Spy is a citizen science project that draws on the contributions of both humans and machines to achieve its scientific goals. The system supports the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (LIGO) by classifying "glitches" that interfere with observations. The system makes three advances on the current state of the art: explicit trai...
In this paper, we describe the results of an online field experiment examining the impacts of messaging about task novelty on the volume of volunteers' contributions to an online citizen science project. Encouraging volunteers to provide a little more content as they work is an attractive strategy to increase the community's output. Prior research...
Community-based Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development relies on contributions from both core and peripheral members. Prior research on core–periphery has focused on software coding-related behaviors. We study how core–periphery roles are related to social-relational behavior in terms of politeness behavior. Data from two FLOSS project...
We examine the relationship between communications by core and peripheral members and Free/Libre Open Source Software project success. The study uses data from 74 projects in the Apache Software Foundation Incubator. We conceptualize project success in terms of success building a community, as assessed by graduation from the Incubator. We compare s...
We consider the processes of achieving alignment in coordinated inter-organizational networks through a case study of a system development project in ARC Transistance, a network of European automobile clubs that cooperate to provide pan-European service. The theoretical contribution of the paper is, first, an extended strategic alignment model for...
We draw on Organizational Discontinuity Theory (ODT) to identify factors that increase communication and coordination problems between teams working on large software development projects. ODT posits that faced with a disruption in the expected flow of communication, called a discontinuity, individuals must make sense of the disruption to address t...
This paper describes the results of an online ï¬eld exper-iment where we designed and analyzed the effects of a goal-setting tracker in an online citizen science project -Floating Forest. The design of our tracker was inï¬uenced by psychology theories of anchoring and goal-setting. Our results of our experiment revealed: (1) setting goals increas...
Research on newcomer roles in peer production sites (e.g., Wikipedia) is characterized by a broad and relatively well articulated set of functionally and culturally recognizable roles. But not all communities come with well-defined roles that newcomers can aspire to occupy. The present study explores activity clusters newcomers create when faced wi...
Software is fundamental to academic research work, both as part of the method and as the result of research. In June 2016 25 people gathered at Schloss Dagstuhl for a week-long Perspectives Workshop and began to develop a manifesto which places emphasis on the scholarly value of academic software and on personal responsibility. Twenty pledges cover...
In this chapter, we introduce the practices of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development as an instance of the convergence of technological affordances with novel social practices to create a novel mode of work. We then consider how FLOSS software might be used for various scientific applications, perhaps leading to a convergence of curre...
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International IFIP WG 2.13 International Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2016, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, in May/June 2016. The 13 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics related to free, libre,...
The vast majority of literature on coordination in team-based projects has drawn on a conceptual separation between explicit (e.g. plans, feedback) and implicit coordination mechanisms (e.g. mental maps, shared knowledge). This analytic distinction presents some limitations in explaining how coordination is reached in organizations characterized by...
Objective: To ensure that cyberinfrastructure for sharing scientific data is useful, system developers need to understand what scientists and other intended users do as well as the attitudes and beliefs that shape their behaviours. This paper introduces personas — detailed descriptions of an “archetypical user of a system” — as an approach for capt...
Market intermediaries are usually thought of as bringing together buyers and sellers. However, intermediaries may also connect these principals with other professionals who can provide assistance with and support for the transaction. We address the question of which set of ties—to buyers and sellers or to other professionals—are more important to t...
We evaluate the efficiency of an online knowledge production pro-
ject and identify factors that affect efficiency. To assess efficiency,
we used the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) modelling methodology. We apply DEA to data from more than 30 Wikipedia language projects over three years. We show that the main Wikipedia
projects were indeed less ef...
How online community members learn to become valuable contributors constitutes a long-standing concern of Community & Technology researchers. The literature tends to highlight participants' access to practice, feedback from experienced members, and relationship building. However, not all crowdsourcing environments offer participants opportunities f...
We examine the DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) project, a transdisciplinary organization tasked with creating a cyberinfrastructure platform to ensure preservation of and access to environmental science and biological science data. Its objective was a difficult one to achieve, requiring innovative solutions. The DataONE project used a...
The paper explores the motivations of volunteers in a large crowd sourcing project and contributes to our understanding of the motivational factors that lead to deeper engagement beyond initial participation. Drawing on the theory of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) and the literature on motivation in crowd sourcing, we analyze interview a...
Panelists will discuss how collective intelligence can be applied to large-scale problems through collaborative online systems. The features and affordances of several such systems will be described, inviting discussion about how such systems can be better designed by the CSCW community.
This is a commentary as part of the debate on Open Access.
Crowdsourced initiatives rely on contributions from experienced and non-experienced contributors rather than on permanent workers. Such new organizational forms challenge existing theories of organizational socialization. Theoretically, the present paper merges insights from the socialization literature with notions of multiple spaces and forms of...