Comparative Studies

Comparative research is conducted in collaboration with two funded research projects: the Comparative Interoperability Project (CIP) and the National Centers for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) ‘community engagement project’. The goal of these projects is to understand the various approaches that large-scale science endeavors within the earth and ecological sciences have taken to producing data interoperability and long-term data preservation. As with the dissertation, my future research will continue to address the challenge of aligning policy, the institutions of science, and the opportunities posed by recent developments in information and computational technique. The comparative perspective will permit a more generalized understanding of the consequences on knowledge production of organizational and technological configurations in the sciences. In total five cyberinfrastructure projects are included in this research, drawing from many disciplines but focusing on the earth and environmental sciences. This range allows for rich contrasts and insight across individual projects.

This article summarizes the CIP rationale for comparison:

“Comparative Interoperability Project: Configurations of Community, Technology, Organization” Proceedings of the Second ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (2005)(Author list: Ribes, Baker, Millerand, Bowker)

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The CIP Team: Karen Baker, David Ribes, Florence Millerand, Geoffie Bowker