Abstract

Ralph Schroeder, Jennifer A. deBeer, Jenny Fry
Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford, UK

e-Research Infrastructures and Scientific Communication

Current advanced technology developments in e-science raise the question as to whether infrastructures for e-science will become a specific niche within the rapidly growing domain of online scientific communication - or whether these advanced research instruments and the scientific communication system will coalesce into a more broadly integrated system of knowledge production, dissemination and access.

The networks of data, tools and outputs that constitute current infrastructure developments, such as standards, ontologies, databases and e-print archives, overlay journals, and web citation metrics, not to mention other such future scholarly services, blur the traditional distinction between tool and resource in science. This distinction is reflected in the division of labour between the social science disciplines which deal with these two objects: the sociology of science and technology studies has focused on tools and how they are coupled to knowledge creation, whilst information science has focused on resources and how they relate to knowledge dissemination and access. In the context of e-science we need to draw on understanding and perspectives relating to both creation and dissemination in order to follow emergent infrastructural challenges. For example, is there a tension between local work practices and goals at the level of individual projects – as against the necessity to coordinate contributions at a macro-level, perhaps even beyond specific knowledge domains, towards a sustainable infrastructure?

This paper will focus on three areas to illuminate these challenges: the prevalence of an ethos of ‘openness’ and the extent to which practices and policies towards ‘openness’ (also often referred to as “open access”) have been developed within e-research; provision of and experiences with shared access to e-research infrastructures in developing countries; and cross-sectoral collaboration and sustainability in e-research.

The paper will be empirically informed using multiple methods, which include a series of structured interviews with UK e-researchers in relation to their experiences with contributing and access to the UK e-science infrastructure; analysis of documentary evidence relating to open access / openness as well as collaboration and sustainability (for example, in the e-Infrastructures Reflection Group Roadmap); and a case study of the Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) Project that aims to integrate several developing countries into an existing European infrastructure.