Scientific Collaboration on the Internet (Acting with Technology) [Hardcover]

Gary M. Olson (Editor), Ann Zimmerman (Editor), Nathan Bos (Editor), William A. Wulf (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0262151200 | ISBN-13: 978-0262151207

The challenges and rewards of scientific collaboration enabled by information and communication technology, from theoretical approaches to in-depth case studies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gary M. Olson is Paul M. Fitts Collegiate Professor of Human Computer Interaction and Professor in both the School of Information and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Ann Zimmerman is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Nathan Bos is a Senior Research Scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.

Modern science is increasingly collaborative, as signaled by rising numbers of coauthored papers, papers with international coauthors, and multi-investigator grants. Historically, scientific collaborations were carried out by scientists in the same physical location--the Manhattan Project of the 1940s, for example, involved thousands of scientists gathered on a remote plateau in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today, information and communication technologies allow cooperation among scientists from far-flung institutions and different disciplines. Scientific Collaboration on the Internet provides both broad and in-depth views of how new technology is enabling novel kinds of science and engineering collaboration. The book offers commentary from notable experts in the field along with case studies of large-scale collaborative projects, past and ongoing. The projects described range from the development of a national virtual observatory for astronomical research to a National Institutes of Health funding program for major multi-laboratory medical research; from the deployment of a cyberinfrastructure to connect experts in earthquake engineering to partnerships between developed and developing countries in AIDS research. The chapter authors speak frankly about the problems these projects encountered as well as the successes they achieved. The book strikes a useful balance between presenting the real stories of collaborations and developing a scientific approach to conceiving, designing, implementing, and evaluating such projects. It points to a future of scientific collaborations that build successfully on aspects from multiple disciplines. Contributors Mark S. Ackerman, Paul Avery, Matthew Bietz, Jeremy P. Birnholtz, Nathan Bos, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Randal Butler, David Conz, Eric Cook, Dan Cooney, Jonathon Cummings, Erik Dahl, Mark Ellisman, Ixchel Faniel, Thomas A. Finholt, Ian Foster, Jeffrey S. Grethe, Edward J. Hackett, Robert J. Hanisch, Libby Hemphill, Tony Hey, Erik C. Hofer, Mark James, Carl Kessleman, Sara Kiesler, Timothy L. Killeen, Airong Luo, Kelly L. Maglaughlin, Doru Marcusiu, Shawn McKee, William K. Michener, James D. Myers, Marsha Naidoo, Michael Nentwich, Gary M. Olson, Judith S. Olson, James Onken, Andrew Parker, John N. Parker, Mary Puetz, David Ribes, Kathleen Ricker, Diana Rhoten, Michael E. Rogers, Titus Schleyer, Diane H. Sonnenwald, B. F. Spencer, Jr., Stephanie D. Teasley, Anne Trefethen, Robert B. Waide, Mary C. Whitton, William Wulf, Jason Yerkie, Ann Zimmerman

Ann Zimmerman is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262151200
• ISBN-13: 978-0262151207
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,650,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Status report of the Science of Collaboratories, May 3, 2009

By 

Darin L. Stewart (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Scientific Collaboration on the Internet (Acting with Technology) (Hardcover)

Science is rarely, if ever, a solo effort and as research projects become increasingly interdisciplinary, the talent required for a given effort is unlikely to be found in at a single physical location. It would seem that with the ubiquity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that this would be a non-issue. Video conferencing, extranets and email should make remote collaboration simple. As anyone who has attempted to schedule meetings across time-zones or share files across firewalls knows, this is not the case. The difficulty of creating and maintaining effective collaborations across geographically dispersed researchers despite the proliferation of collaboration tools, is a recurring theme running through all twenty chapters of "Scientific Collaboration on the Internet" the latest installment of the Acting with Technology series from MIT Press.

This book is more or less a status report on the mission of the Science of Collaboratories project. The first two sections, "The Contemporary Collaboratory Vision" and "Perspectives on Distributed, Collaborative Science" frame the discussion and begin to establish a vocabulary for the conversation. Fundamental concepts such as e-science, cyberscience and cyberinfrastructure are discussed in detail in the first few chapters and definitions are proposed, but cannot be said to be definitive. Once the groundwork is established the pertinent concepts are fleshed out into a taxonomy of collaboratories and rolled into a nascent "Theory of Remote Collaboration." The tone of these chapters is very academic and not a particularly fun read but they do provide a structure for evaluating the various projects examined in the remainder of the book.

It may be tempting to focus only on the section pertaining to ones own field. (I automatically flipped directly to the Biological and Health Sciences) but to do so would be to miss the true value of this volume. While some of the scenarios may be drawn directly from our day-to-day professional experience, seeing the same fundamental issue in the context of a different discipline can be enlightening. This is particularly true in the section on The Developing World in which scientists from the industrialized world must work with scientists in the third world who face challenges unheard of in the well-funded west.

Of course, despite the efforts of Olson, Zimmerman and Bos, their contributors and the greater Science of Collaboration project, the none of the questions surrounding remote scientific collaboration are answered definitively. Rather they serve to frame the various reports and highlight common themes. The main theme that emerges is that facilitating collaboration is not at its heart a technology problem. In a world of increasing competition for scarce research resources, getting scientists to play nicely together is the perennial challenge of fostering collaboration. As each of the case studies demonstrates, technological barries can generally be overcome, but social and professional hurdles persist. As the editors note "even when advanced technologies are available, distance still matters."

An extended review is available at www.connected-science.com

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Written to fulfil bureaucratic needs, December 12, 2010

By 

Greg Wilson (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scientific Collaboration on the Internet (Acting with Technology) (Hardcover)

I had high hopes for this book, none of which it fulfilled. I came away feeling that the book was put together so that someone could tick off an obligation made on a long-ago grant proposal.