CFP: Supporting Scientific Collaboration Through Cyberinfrastructure and e-Science

Call for Papers Special Issue of JCSCW

Guest Editors: Charlotte P. Lee, David Ribes, Matthew Bietz , Marina Jirotka, and Helena Karasti

Scientific collaboration using cyberinfrastructure (CI), or e-Science, is forward facing. e-Science projects aim to support the collaboration of research communities, whether by facilitating distanced collaboration or sharing data and computational resources. The most ambitious e-Science projects are creating entirely novel scientific fields, anticipating and actively cultivating new scientific communities and practices. Such endeavors present original challenges to researchers in CSCW fields: questions of large-scale technology development, of supporting communities in addition to groups, and of long-term sustainability.

Cyberinfrastructure and e-Science projects are partially information technology research ventures, but they are also forms of applied sociology, e.g., building bridges across heterogeneous disciplinary traditions and scientific methods. Careful attention must be paid to the full range of participant’s activities as they go about their work. How to establish reliable, accessible and appropriate information infrastructure is a challenge for contemporary CSCW.

For this special issue on computer supported scientific collaboration, we welcome research on topics such as, but not limited to: case studies or comparative analyses of cyberinfrastructure & e-Science development or use; novel applications for large-scale scientific collaboration; and practices for supporting heterogeneous, distributed, or long-term collaborations. We seek empirically grounded studies with a sensibility for theoretical contributions to CSCW and closely related fields.

Schedule and Submission Process

October 1, 2009………..	Deadline for submission of manuscripts
November 1, 2009…….	Notification of acceptance
January 15, 2009………	Submission of finished manuscripts
2010…………………………	Publication

Instructions for Authors: http://www.springer.com/computer/journal/10606

Submitting Manuscripts: Authors should submit their manuscripts to the Editorial Manager (EM) system (at http://www.editorialmanager.com/cosu/ ). Select the appropriate special issue under Article Type: Scientific Collaboration Through Cyberinfrastructure.

About the Journal: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) disseminates innovative research results and provides an interdisciplinary forum for the debate and exchange of ideas concerning theoretical, practical, technical, and social issues in CSCW. Coverage ranges from ethnographic studies of cooperative work to reports on the development of CSCW systems and their technological foundations.

'Scientific Collaboration on the Internet' Published by MIT Press

The book 'Scientific Collaboration on the Internet' edited by Gary Olson, Ann Zimmerman and Nathan Bos has, at long last, been published.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11603

This book contains a GEON case study written by yours truly (with Geof Bowker) focusing on the two primary 'disciplinary boundaries' that participants must navigate as they seek to develop common Cyberinfrastructure: domain/domain (e.g., geophysics and paleobotany)  and domain/IT (e.g., geoscientists and computer scientists).

Two NSF awards!

I have been awarded two NSF grants to fund my research on Cyberinfrastructure and Virtual Organization!

I am a principal investigator (PI) on 'Delegating Organizational Work to Virtual Organization Technologies' from the Virtual Organizations as Sociotechnical Systems (VOSS) program.

I am a co-PI on 'Monitoring, Modeling and Memory: Dynamics of Data and Knowledge in Scientific Cyberinfrastructure' from the Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) program.

I'll be working closely on these exciting projects with my colleagues for the next few years.  More on this to come.

Participants and institutions on these projects include: Christine Borgman (UCLA); Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (Santa Clara University); Paul N. Edwards, Steven J. Jackson and Thomas Finholt (University of Michigan).

I have arrived at Georgetown

I'm now at Georgetown University in the Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) program.

I'm teaching two masters courses this fall. I'll write more about this but for now, the short of it is that I'm teaching an introduction to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and a 'classics of qualitative studies of technology' course.

Inaugural Research Institute for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems

Currently attending (07.20-25) the Inaugural Research Institute for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST).  This elaborate title actually reflects a very exciting endeavor to bring together senior and junior scholars in social informatics, STS and other information centered studies.

The primary organizers (Steve Sawyer and Tom Finholt) have assembled a spectacular cast of characters and we've been discussing everything from research and methods, to the development of institutionalized support and creating venues for our disparate research.