Overcoming the Social and Technical Challenges to Virtual Scientific Collaboration: The Birth of the NASA Astrobiology Institute as a Community of Practice. (original) (raw)
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Overcoming the Social and Technical Challenges to Virtual Scientific Collaboration
development, 2004
O Ov ve er rc co om mi in ng g t th he e S So oc ci ia al l a an nd d T Te ec ch hn ni ic ca al l C Ch ha al ll le en ng ge es s t to o V Vi ir rt tu ua al l S Sc ci ie en nt ti if fi ic c C Co ol ll la ab bo or ra at ti io on n The Birth of the NASA Astrobiology Institute as a Community of Practice Abstract -This paper summarizes a three-year project to create a community of practice [1] among 500+ scientists affiliated with the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). Recognizing the needs to collaborate and still control travel costs, NAI engaged FutureU in 2000 to help facilitate the process of community development across distance.
Making Science: New Generations of Collaborative Knowledge Production
American Behavioral Scientist, 2014
Research scientists have become increasingly dependent on collaborations across laboratories and organizations to maintain their productivity. However, the increased specialization of individual laboratories works against the current drive toward understanding systems in the sciences. Consequently, there is a tension between the rising importance of collaborative efforts and the practical and structural challenges in establishing and managing such collaborations. Combining ethnographic case studies of three biology research labs with network data of their larger scientific community, we explore the changing process of scientific knowledge production in the age of Big Science. We find that virtual technologies open up the knowledge process as scientists have easier access to data, publications, and each other. At the same time, we find that these technologies-specifically scientific databases-do not eradicate the social aspects of scientific knowledge production as collaborative structures in science remain relatively unchanged. We discuss the implications for theory and practice of this seemingly contradictory character of scientific knowledge production.
iConference 2016 Proceedings
The goal of this session for interaction and engagement is to explore and document the many individual practices of social scientists who collaborate at a distance with other scientists. We approach learning about the diverse spectrum of scientific practices common to conference attendees through an ethos of participatory design, show and tell, and performance of practice. This participation happens in three ways. The first is through both open and small group discussions of science practices and uses of digital resources. The second form is through drawing, concept mapping and diagramming scientific practices and uses of digital resources. Lastly, participation through comments and markups of the records of discussions and artifacts from drawing, concept-mapping and diagramming. This session will also be of interest to the community of scholars that study scientific practices, social studies of science, and cyberinfrastructure.
Journal of The American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2003
Collaboration is often a critical aspect of scientific research, which is dominated by complex problems, rapidly changing technology, dynamic growth of knowledge, and highly specialized areas of expertise. An individual scientist can seldom provide all of the expertise and resources necessary to address complex research problems. This paper describes collaboration among a group of scientists, and considers how their experiences are socially shaped. The scientists were members of a newly formed distributed, multi-disciplinary academic research center that was organized into four multi-disciplinary research groups. Each group had 14 to 34 members, including faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students, at four geographically dispersed universities. To investigate challenges that emerge in establishing scientific collaboration, data were collected about members' previous and current collaborative experiences, perceptions regarding collaboration, and work practices during the center's first year of operation. The data for the study includes interviews with members of the center, observations of videoconferences and meetings, and a center-wide sociometric survey. Data analysis has led to the development of a framework that identifies forms of collaboration that emerged among scientists (e.g., complementary and integrative collaboration) and associated factors, which influenced collaboration including personal compatibility, work connections, incentives, and infrastructure. These results may inform the specification of social and organizational practices, which are needed to establish collaboration in distributed, multi-disciplinary research centers.
Principles for Cultivating Scientific Communities of Practice
Communities and Technologies 2005, 2005
Scientific communities can be seen as a specific type of Communities of Practice (CoP). In this paper we analyze scientific communities from the CoP point of view. We show how models and design principles from CoP can be interpreted and adapted for scientific communities. Taking the CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) community as an example, we instantiate the adapted design principles and trace the development of this community based on an analysis of its first decade of existence (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005). This analysis includes an analysis of CSCL conference proceedings and an analysis of the lists of participants and program committee members of CSCL conferences.