Table of Contents
Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Barriers
- Forces for Change
- Questions for Research
- Summary
- Recommendations
- NSF should conduct research
on connectivity and collaboration.
- NSF should conduct an internal
review of its data sharing policies with a view to encouraging
online sharing.
- NSF should represent the
concerns of the academic science community aggressively within
the national science policy arena, to improve connectivity
and collaboration.
- NSF should continue working
in the international arena to foster similar policy approaches.
- Participants
Executive Summary
Connecting and Collaborating: Issues for the Sciences is the title
of a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and held
at the Walter and Judith Munk Laboratory of the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, June 22-24, 1995. The
invited participants (listed at the end of this report) came from many
academic disciplines in the sciences. They were united only by their
desire to understand the scientific, social, and economic impacts of
using advanced communications technology. The results of their work are
summarized in this report.
The workshop considered actions that can be taken by NSF, other agencies,
the scientific societies, and universities seeking to improve the climate
in which science is done and to facilitate scientific communication and
collaboration. Specific recommendations to NSF are:
1. NSF should conduct research on connectivity and collaboration.
Research is needed to monitor and extend access to the net, to expand
educational uses of the net, to develop online databases and software for
data "mining" and analysis.
2. NSF should conduct an internal review of its data sharing policies
with a view to encouraging online sharing. NSF should also do what it
can to raise the academic status of work done in this area.
3. NSF should represents the concerns of the academic science
community aggressively within the national science policy arena, to
improve connectivity and collaboration. This is particularly
important now as laws applicable to the net are changing and rulemaking
is under consideration.
4. NSF should continue working in the international arena to foster
similar policy approaches in other countries. This is particularly
important for advancing democratization efforts in many areas.
1. Introduction
This is a report to the National Science Foundation of a workshop
sponsored by NSF and held at the Walter and Judith Munk Laboratory of the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego,
June 22-24, 1995. Connecting and Collaborating: Issues for the
Sciences was convened to explore the new world of opportunities for
scientific collaboration opened by the growth of national and global
networked communications.
Advanced communication technologies have reorganized scientific
communities worldwide. Electronic access to collaborators, to
ever-growing quantities of information, and to world-class tools of
science boost scientific productivity and foster search-and-discover
missions of unprecedented power and promise.
The new "wired" science covers a vast territory. Scientists connect
across geography, time zones, and disciplines via electronic mail,
bulletin boards, discussion forums, and newsgroups. The scientific
literature is close at hand in a host of new "e-journals," ranging from
electronic versions of leading paper journals to all-electronic ventures
into the world of hypertext, complete with interactive feedback and
audio/video enhancements. Scientists search library catalogs and view
items in museum collections worldwide . Biochemists download protein
structures; chemists grab IR spectra; physicists post preprints; social
scientists conduct surveys. A telescope on a mountain in Chile, a
synchrotron in Illinois, a supercomputer in San Diego--all are online, to
be programmed or guided by researchers half a world away.
This is just the beginning, of course. Soon, the members of scientific
communities, in voice and video contact with any number of peers, will
access multidimensional data sets simultaneously, acquire masses of
experimental data in real or near-real time, "steer" large-scale
computations while watching the results in vivid three-dimensional
presentations. Collaboration without barriers will ease the undertaking
of global-scale experiments. It need not cost the earth to know the
earth.
The conquest of space and time by computer-mediated communication
portends profound social change. As National Academy members Shmuel
Winograd and Richard N. Zare write, in a recent editorial in
Science, "electronic networks are changing the way scientists
communicate and interact with each other--from the casual exchange of
gossip and information to the preparation of articles and the
dissemination of research results."[1] As the old norms give way to new
ones, new issues arise. For example, the advent of electronic
publications of greater or lesser formality is raising anew questions
about journal practices and peer review. The networked publication of
both raw and processed data has brought with it questions of intellectual
property, confidentiality, and authorial credit. Institutional
allegiances, questions of tenure and promotion, anonymity and privacy:
all are challenged by the sudden advent of new "forms of life" (as
Wittgenstein called such cultural shifts) enabled by advanced
communications technologies.
How can NSF and other agencies facilitate the exploitation of every
opportunity to use the new forms for collaboration and interaction across
the sciences? What barriers must be overcome? These are the questions put
to the invited participants in Connecting and Collaborating, a
representative group of informed geophysical, biological, library, and
social scientists. This report contains their answers, their slate of
issues for further research, and their recommendations for policy
changes.
The second section of this report characterizes some scientific,
technical, and structural/cultural barriers to computer-mediated
scientific collaboration. What research is required for a full
understanding of these barriers? What can be done to overcome them? The
third section is an examination of the countervailing forces, the
developments that will encourage computer-mediated communication in
national and international scientific communities. What must be known
about these forces? What can be done to assist them? In the fourth
section, the report focuses on questions requiring further research and
on ways to accomplish such research.
The workshop's findings are summarized in the fifth section, and the
report concludes with the formal recommendations of the workshop
participants. These recommendations address not only what NSF can do on
its own, but also what NSF can do in collaboration with other agencies,
universities, and scientific societies to underwrite the ability of
computer-mediated communication to benefit the American and worldwide
scientific enterprise.
2. Barriers
Barriers to computer-mediated communication and collaboration are
scientific, technical, and structural. Scientific barriers, specific to
particular disciplines, affect communication within and across
disciplines. Interdisciplinarity and economic constraints operate within
the sciences to lower such barriers. Technical barriers reflect the state
of a nation's communications infrastructure and of computer and program
compatibility and interoperability. These barriers can yield to greater
commitment to open and democratic access and to ongoing investment in
infrastructure by both the public and private sectors in the United
States and abroad. The structural barriers are the most various, arising
within the legal, economic, political, social, and cultural contexts of
the sciences, all of which are challenged by advanced networked
communications.
Scientific Barriers
Just as disciplinary boundaries can make communication difficult in
face-to-face meetings across disciplines, so can they interfere with
smooth computer-mediated communication.
The training of biochemists differs from that of ecologists or
neuroscientists. All consider themselves biologists, but their universes
of discourse differ widely. Precision in astrophysics is one thing; in
nuclear physics, it is another. A geologist's view of time is likely to
differ from that of even the most longitudinally inclined social
scientist. As greater connectivity brings greater interdisciplinarity to
research, such differences can lead to misunderstanding and unnecessary
contention.
In some sciences, notably molecular biology, analysts (historians,
philosophers, and sociologists of science) have found national "styles"
of research that can be sources of difficulty in international
collaboration. Moreover, the academic scientist operates in one context,
the scientist in a national laboratory operates in another, and still
other contexts can be distinguished in industrial and commercial
settings.
Finally, it is worth noting that the science that underpins advanced
networked communications issues from congeries of specialties distributed
across computer science, engineering, library science, and informatics.
The distance of these specialties from the main streams of other sciences
has resulted in no small amount of duplication of effort.
Discipline-specific solutions to problems like data archiving and
analysis do not generalize easily; yet quite elegant, nonspecific
solutions devised in one field may never find appropriate problems in
others.
Protocols for acquiring, analyzing, and using data differ from specialty
to specialty and, indeed, in some fields, from scientist to scientist.
Scientists may not wish to share data with anyone equipped to download
them, and this reluctance could impede the studies of others. These
issues arise in acute form among social scientists or biologists with
human subjects data, when confidentiality may be a paramount concern.
The quality of some data already available on the web has been
questioned, and some scientists have formed the curious expectation that
easily available data are somehow suspect. The usefulness of data in
repositories can dissipate with time and distance from the circumstances
of collection if the tacit assumptions are not brought to light and
expressed in the "metadata"--the data describing the data.
Evidence about the scientific barriers to collaboration via
computer-mediated communication is largely anecdotal. A well-designed
survey of the members of scientific and engineering departments and of
scientists and engineers working in national laboratories or in
industrial or business settings could pinpoint areas in which such
difficulties have in fact impeded collaboration.
Nevertheless, strong forces work against the disciplinary and contextual
barriers. Multiple interdisciplinarities characterize most larger
scientific problems. Questions of regional or global concern in the
environmental sciences, medicine and public health, and economics require
the kinds of data and information exchange that only modern networks make
possible. Economic constraints operate to foster collaboration among
university, government, and industrial scientists on projects of mutual
interest.
Technical Barriers
Of the technical barriers that impede worldwide computer-mediated
scientific collaboration, the first is the barrier to access itself. In
the United States, owing to the history of the net, which was developed
by and for government and academic researchers, access at a basic
(text-based) level is available to university and government scientists
from their institutions, usually at little or no cost. Access for
industrial scientists is generally more expensive, but nothing other than
cost impedes company access to the net. Access within the K-12
educational system, however, is not nearly as broad as it should be to
make best use of networked tools for science education. All forms of
access rely upon the national telecommunications network, which is, in
the United States, a large, dense, highly redundant, and intercompatible
set of systems.
This is not the case, however, in many other countries. The primary
barriers to international network access in less-developed nations are
telecommunications infrastructures that are old, sparse, and designed for
use by a minority of a country's citizens. Incentives to revamp these
systems are coming, however, from the structure of the world economy.
Nations with minimal infrastructure that begin to upgrade now might yet
pull even with or move ahead of the United States and Western Europe in
terms of the average speed, capacity, and cost-per-bit-transferred of the
infrastructure as a whole, since there is very little need for downward
compatibility.
Scientific collaboration and productivity worldwide must overcome
barriers beyond those presented by the national telecommunications
networks. Most U.S. scientists can communicate via email and send or
download short files. But not all have access, as individuals or through
their institutions, to the kind of equipment required to access and view
the pictures-plus-text files available on the World Wide Web. Extremely
powerful "server" machines and rapid modems are required if scientists
wish to work effectively at this level, both in the United States and
abroad, and while the technology daily becomes less and less expensive,
there is a rapid differentiation between and among institutional
participants in scientific collaboration who can or cannot afford to keep
up with the technology.
Beyond today's state-of-the-art web access lies a fresh technical
territory that must be explored and occupied. Many large datasets are
available to scientists with web access, but most interchange of data
(transfers from one computer to another) is at the level of relatively
small file sizes. What is needed is the capacity to store petabytes of
data, and to analyze, and manipulate terabytes of data at a time. The
gigabit-per-second networks under development are still far from wide
implementation, yet a dense network of such high-speed optical fiber must
be installed to enable scientists to work with large datasets, some of
which may themselves be stored in a distributed fashion, on more than one
machine. The development of software to access, manipulate, and analyze
so much data, and of media on which to store it for rapid access, lie in
the future.
Structural Barriers
The development of scientific communication and collaboration on a
worldwide scale can be thought of as an enormous extension of the field,
laboratory, instrumental, archival, and computational spaces in which
scientists work. The architecture of these spaces is not something
designed and built by technicians for scientists to occupy at some later
date. The designers and builders are scientists themselves.
One of the most significant barriers to this activity is presented by the
current structure of the reward/status system in universities, and its
echoes in government and industrial laboratories. The scientific
community is in practice reevaluating the value of data gathering and
dissemination efforts, and the new prominence and centrality of such
efforts in the contexts of scientific collaboration and interdisciplinary
work appears to be going unrecognized by promotion and tenure committees.
Research is required to assess the nature of the resistance in several
contexts (research universities, affiliated institutions, government
laboratories, industrial research units) and to devise means of
encouraging the changes in the system that may be needed.
State, national, and international legal systems also supply barriers to
advanced computer-mediated collaboration. Laws and regulations governing
intellectual property, copyright, property rights, privacy, and
confidentiality can stifle collaborations before they begin (or, worse,
bring them to a halt after much energy has been expended). Legislation
pertaining specifically to networked communication is under consideration
in the current Congress, and some proposals contain provisions that might
hamper scientific interchange. While several ad hoc organizations exist
to follow these developments, the representation of the interests of the
research communities is not well organized. How should this situation be
addressed?
Slowing down the pace of change are economic barriers that exist within
and across nations. Support for scientific research and technological
innovation is well down on the priority list for many nations, including
many that are current sites of interest for global projects in biology,
ecology, climatic change, and public health. Yet the participation of
these nations and their scientists in such projects may be critical for
their success.
Another economic consideration that militates against communication and
collaboration is the potential profitability of new developments in
technology and biotechnology. Tendencies to enforce secrecy or the
withholding of data from larger research communities are found both
within and between nations, in both private and public sectors. Another
trend is the commercialization of data in the public domain, where the
added value is the software through which the data are accessed.
Geophysicists using accurate maps and social scientists using certain
kinds of statistics are particularly affected by these practices.
Some much more subtle social and cultural barriers, whose influence is
difficult to assess and perhaps even more difficult to combat, come from
the prevailing norms of thought within the sciences and scholarship
generally. A particularly good example is the mixed reception of
electronic publication and dissemination of scientific results. As in the
world of paper journals, new electronic journals have appeared for a
variety of reasons and are no more or less credible (in terms of the
reputations of editorial boards, for example) than the spectrum of paper
journals. A noticeable difference has been the lower cost barrier to
start up a journal, and the consequent expansion of the scientific
journal literature is regarded with suspicion by many. How much is a
response to the barriers to publication in established paper journals?
How many of the new journals represent necessary and reasonable additions
to the already crowded field? What is the meaning of "peer review" in
such journals? Are they more likely to be the "house organs" of groups
who feel slighted by the editorial policies of established paper
journals? Do the e-journals deserve less respect than paper journals?
Right now, few all-electronic journals are kept in any form (either as
computer files or printed out) by university or public libraries, and the
indexing and abstracting services are also hesitant to add the e-journals
to their lists. Is there a prejudice in favor of the familiar
journal-in-hand or printed book and against the authority of anything
seen on the computer monitor screen? These suspicions are being
dissipated as major, established journals in all fields begin to appear
online, but it is difficult to predict the future. Will paper and
electronic journals coexist, like radio and television? Or will the
electronic journal inevitably supplant the paper one?
Finally, will barriers to advanced, networked communication among
scientists be raised by the current erosion of public and political
support for science and technology? Or can the ease of communication in a
networked society be exploited to lower the barriers by involving a
larger public in the projects of the scientific community? In the next
section, developments that facilitate changes in favor of collaboration
are examined.
3. Forces for Change
Those whose activities affect the shape and direction of the sciences can
work to good effect against the barriers discussed in Section II. Their
efforts will be propelled forward by the momentum of several rather
deepgoing changes in the technical, scientific, and social landscapes.
A Revolution in Computing
The last decade has seen a hundredfold growth in the capacities of
computers at all levels. It is possible to buy a personal, laptop
computer that has more power, speed, and memory than most university-wide
systems in operation ten years ago, for a twentieth of the cost. Instead
of supplying "mainframes" or masses of personal computers, many academic
computing centers have turned themselves into network experts and
purchasing agents for an ever-shifting array of ever-more-powerful
workstations, and it is these that occupy the desktops of scientists.
The revolution is still accelerating. A new generation of equipment
becomes available to the scientific community every two to three years,
and there appear to be several orders of magnitude to go in improvements
in current technology (magnetic and optical storage media, for example)
before a major technological shift will be necessary (to one of the more
compact storage and switching systems, some of them biological, that are
hinted at in current research). Improvements in hardware have accounted
for one or two orders of magnitude in the throughput of equipment. But
some improvements in software have been even more spectacular:
algorithmic advances can speed processing by three or four orders of
magnitude. Such advances are the basis for the stable communication of
the compute-intensive data (audio, video, "virtual reality" modes)
available on the web.
One subject for continuing research is the network itself. As built, it
is not instrumented to measure itself and deliver statistics on traffic
bursts, loads, alternative routes, or throughput. The theory of networks
can tackle many ill-behaved and ill-conditioned problems, but none yet of
the size and complexity presented by what is already in place and
continually growing. Experience with the electric power grid and the
telephone network is not much help because of the inhomogeneity of
systems and applications on the net. Gathering proper statistics means
solving two problems: (1) devising proper metrics (what should be
measured and when), and (2) using them without having a negative impact
on throughput itself. NSF's Computer and Information Science and
Engineering Directorate now funds a National Laboratory for Applied
Network Research, distributed over the several supercomputer centers,
which is making a beginning in this area.
Disciplinary Shifts
The disciplinary boundaries established during the rise of the American
university system can no longer hold the suburban sprawl of the sciences.
The traditional departments of chemistry, physics, biology, sociology,
political science, and engineering have been joined by others--first by
cautious newcomers (departments of physical chemistry, departments of
chemical physics) and then by brasher and brasher upstarts. Among these
are computer and information science, various "applied" departments, and,
finally (the sign of academic hands thrown up in futility), departments
of "X studies," where X can be very nearly anything.
Several processes are going on here. One is that the cores of traditional
disciplines are dissolving or even vanishing as specialization divides
them. The traditional geography curriculum, for example, must in some
universities be assembled from bits of earth sciences, economics,
anthropology, and sociology. Another is that new cores are replacing
older ones, in response to social demands for new combinations of
knowledge. The molecular biologist studying the effects of toxic
substances on plant enzymes, for example, may have willy-nilly to be an
ecologist in her spare time.
As old specialties reshape themselves, new ones emerge, and advanced
networking plays a role. What seem to be individual lines of research or
tiny streams are now sustained through electronic communication as they
gather momentum or dissipate. An example is the recent coalescence of
neurological and computational researchers in a new branch of cognitive
science. The extent to which scientists in these newer fields have relied
upon networked communication is a topic for research.
Computer-mediated collaboration is proving ideal also for exploiting the
new fuzziness of the boundaries, and the net supplies a loose culture in
which it is possible to meet and talk with scientists far from one's own
discipline, people one would never see at the usual meetings one attends.
The existence of open discussion groups on all sorts of topics enables
scientists to find new "colleagues of opportunity" where interests truly
converge.
Globalization of Science
As computer-mediated communication makes physical separation less and
less of a barrier to international collaboration, a "globalization" of
formerly parochial disciplines occurs. French biochemistry meets American
biochemistry, enriching biochemistry as a whole through the contact of
scientists from differing traditions. Such interactions are often cast in
terms of U.S. scientists assisting scientists from developing nations,
but in fact the traffic goes in many directions. All benefit from
scientific knowledge or special data formerly available to scientists in
only one country.
These developments heighten the importance of strengthening international
scientific organizations and should have effects on the design,
frequency, and organization of scientific congresses and international
gatherings. The established international research centers will become
even more vital scientific crossroads as globalization progresses. These
include resources shared by scientists from many countries (e.g.,
Fermilab, the Advanced Photon Source under construction at Argonne
National Laboratories, CERN in Geneva). Contacts made at congresses or
through work at international resource loci can be sustained as remote
collaborations, thanks to the net, while the sites themselves benefit
from broader participation in planning large-scale experiments. NSF's
offices for international programs have much work to do in this area of
scientific globalization.
Democratization of Science
The globalization of science under the aegis of technological advances
made in Western democracies bodes well for the democratization of science
generally. The spread of democratic norms and the values of equity and
fairness may be expected to increase as access itself increases, opening
up the transmission of knowledge across frontiers. As formerly
authoritarian societies have learned, it is impossible to suppress new
forms of communication, from xerography to networking, without severely
damaging the scientific and technological infrastructure.
While the Connecting and Collaborating workshop tried to restrict
its concerns to the issue of collaboration within the scientific
community, it was clear at every turn that the democratic context of that
community is of paramount concern. The pursuit of global problems in
science (e.g., climatic change) is dependent on the understanding and
participation of many sectors of society. Most important among these is
the system of scientific education. Already, the net has been used to
organize K-12 grade school projects in ecology that can be essential
contributions to ecological and climate research. Just as scientific
productivity is increased by access to networked communication, so is the
production and training of scientific and technical talent.
Thus the tasks ahead include broadening democratic access to the net and
its resources in the United States and worldwide, and the network itself
is a valuable ally in the cause.
In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that the world has become the
"global village" of which Marshall McLuhan spoke 30 years ago.
Individuals who fear or resist the changes of the computer revolution,
interdisciplinarity, globalization, and democratization can expect to be
left behind, and may even serve a valuable function as commentators on
the new responsibilities that accompany new powers--provided they get on
the net and comment where they can be heard. Computer-mediated
networking, communication, and collaboration is under way, and it will
mean changes in the reward system in the universities and across the
sciences, changes in legal systems, international adjustments, and
fundamental changes in the balance between individualism and group or
communal orientation to life and work.
The discussions of barriers in Section 2 and of forces opposing them in
this section suggest that there are numerous areas in which research must
be undertaken before strategies for improving computer-mediated
collaboration can be devised. The questions for research are gathered and
ordered in the following section.
4. Questions for Research
What can be done to lower the barriers to smooth and productive
computer-mediated collaboration among scientists worldwide? NSF should
sponsor research to increase our knowledge of the opportunities for
collaborative science available on the network. In addition, NSF can use
its own policies (perhaps changed to some degree as a result of the
research) and its position nationally and internationally as a "bully
pulpit" to promote equal access to information and equitable standards
for sharing it.
There are several areas in which research should be done, discussed
below. Vehicles for this research may be as simple as meetings or
workshops or as complex as conferences, longitudinal studies, or
full-scale curricular or software development projects. Some projects may
be best carried out on the basis of new proposal solicitations. In other
areas, efforts that have begun within more general programs sponsored by
NSF can be aided by extending these programs rather than initiating new
ones.
Monitoring and Extending Access
Since continuously broadening access is fundamental to the
democratization of knowledge, the levels of access prevailing in various
scientific communities should be monitored. The costs of such access
should be examined, and ways should be developed to insure access for
sections of the scientific communities that cannot afford it. If
electronic means do not exist to gather usage and cost statistics on an
ongoing basis, these could be developed under an extension of the current
CISE program for applied network research.
Access for U.S. scientists and engineers should be followed at a
representative sample of research universities and other institutions of
higher education. Access for K-12 teachers and students should also be
assessed periodically, if this is not already done by any other agency.
Finally, acccess for scientists and their students to their opposite
numbers in foreign research institutions should be maintained and
broadened as much as possible. Research should be undertaken with a
view to widening access by achieving economies of scale, negotiating
advantageous terms for educational uses of software for access and data
analysis, and similar measures.
Expanding Educational Uses of the Net
Advanced communications technologies have been used to make new
curriculum development and project designs much more widely available to
the community of science educators. What is missing is a centralized
means for science educators to learn what curriculum development is
taking place where, and what training is being offered in use of the
resources of the net, on a regular basis. A national conference should
be convened for science educators to share and consolidate information
and recommend continuing programs for science curriculum development at
all levels in the educational system.
Scientific and Technical Online Databases and
Data-handling Software
This topic is at once the most technical and the most critical for the
future of collaboration in advanced scientific research in the United
States and around the world. Research is needed on the available
scientific and technical data resources of the network, both academic and
commercial. A full taxonomy should be developed to classify these and
the salient differences among them.
-
How are the available databases used and who uses them?
-
Which are instrumented to acquire user statistics? Is software
development needed in this area?
-
Are various classes of user access maintainable?
-
What metadata are available to users, and what upgrades of these
metadata would make the data more widely useful?
-
How are metadata and data files updated? Are there software developments
that can ease the tasks of data deposition, checking, and updating?
-
How is quality control maintained by developers and/or contributors, and
can some of these tasks be automated?
-
What policies and procedures will encourage rapid data deposition from
publicly funded projects? (An example is the arrangements made between
the Protein Data Bank and the scientific journals for the journals to
require deposition of new coordinates before publishing structures.)
-
How should costs of maintaining databases be recovered? Can special fees
be negotiated for academic users of commercial databases to account for
the value added by academic studies relying on such data?
Appropriate demonstration projects in this area might be sponsored by
CISE or the disciplinary directorates, and cross-disciplinary research
should be undertaken to produce both model agreements and technical
developments (e.g., software) to insure that confidentiality and privacy
are preserved for human research subjects.
Evaluating the Role of Electronic Publications
Electronic publications exist at the moment in what has been called "a
netherworld of gray literature." What spectrum of e-journals exists in
the sciences? How fast are established paper journals developing
electronic counterparts? How can editorial boards function to improve the
speed of scientific communications while maintaining quality control? Who
uses the e-journals, and how are they cited? Should e-journals be
separately indexed and abstracted or should statistics be combined with
those for paper journals?
A vast repository of scientific and historical information is represented
by the occasional publications of institutions. Newsletters are a
category not kept in most research libraries, for example. How are
information sources online regarded for library purposes?
NSF should initiate research in conjunction with the major national
scientific societies and commercial journal publishers, as well as with
library organizations, to stay abreast of the changing place of
electronic journals and newsletters in the world of scientific
information.
Increasing Scientific Productivity
It is necessary to find means to estimate the effects of rapid electronic
communication and data dissemination on scientific productivity
generally. The existing measures of such productivity--e.g., number of
papers published by research groups in peer-reviewed journals, patents
issued--do not take into account the new modes of production represented
by the development of digital archives, preprint repositories, and other
unique formats available on the net.
NSF should conduct research in this area, perhaps in an interagency
environment, to find new measures of productivity that consider both
peer-reviewed publication and contributions of data or software as
products of scientific activity. It would be wise to involve in this
research representatives of the programs and institutions that have
developed or enforced productivity measures now in use. A shift is being
sought in the recognition accorded scientific workers by departmental
tenure committees, indexers, and abstractors, to name just a few of the
powers concerned.
NSF should conduct research to find ways of promoting the significant
change in the view of productivity measures that is called for by the
advent of computer-mediated communication and collaboration.
Most of these issues are part of a highly coupled and interconnected set
of influences affecting collaboration. They may not be fully addressed by
individual projects, or even by somewhat broader research initiatives.
But NSF has created various national centers where expertise of this sort
is assembled, and NSF can require the necessary research as a condition
of funding. Such centers can conduct broadly focused, long-term,
self-evaluating research on the agenda above. In carrying the results of
this research into the international arena, NSF can take advantage of the
fact that many of these centers have counterpart centers in other nations
(e.g., the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis funded
by NSF has a counterpart in the European Science Foundation's GISDATA
Programme).
Finally, the technology is subject to rapid and sweeping changes. The
length and periodicity of funded research should be reconsidered
frequently in the light of new techniques. Some short-term programs might
bear repetition, and consideration of the pace of change should be built
into longer term research. Faster review cycles for programs in this area
may be warranted.
5. Summary
Connecting and Collaborating: Issues for the Sciences brought
together scientists from a range of fields--biology, geophysics,
sociology, and library and archival sciences--and from several countries.
The participants discussed the state of advanced networking technologies
as seen from their various vantage points, seeking a common framework for
considering ways to improve communication and collaboration among
scientists in the United States and internationally.
The participants found scientific, technical, and structural barriers to
connectivity. The scientific barriers arise mainly from difficulties of
communication across disciplines. Technical barriers are in the main
barriers to access to the network related to the capacity of
telecommunications systems in various countries. Structural barriers
include the reward/status system in the sciences, legal barriers,
economic barriers, and social and cultural barriers (opposition to
electronic publication, resistance to change generally, declining public
support for science, and proprietary competition).
Against these barriers, the workshop found, were strong forces that
improve the opportunities for collaboration. The ongoing revolution in
computing puts tremendous power into the hands of individual users. The
social and political urgency of finding solutions to global scientific
problems promotes the emergence of new disciplines in the sciences, and
of a new interdisciplinarity. The connection and collaboration already
under way gives impetus to a globalization of the sciences and momentum
to the democratization of science and the spread of democratic norms
generally.
The workshop constructed a list of areas in which research could aid in
the development of policies that will encourage global connectivity and
national and international scientific collaboration. These span
monitoring and extending access to full connectivity, expanding
educational uses of the net, gathering information about databases
available on line and software to analyze the data, evaluating the
changing role of electronic publications in the sciences, and studying
ways to improve scientific productivity using the technology and changing
the cultural systems within which it is used.
The next section contains the workshop's formal recommendations for NSF
and discussions of what other agencies, universities, and scientific
societies can do to facilitate both research and policy developments.
6. Recommendations
NSF has a very long tradition of supporting the development of advanced
computing resources for the American scientific community.[2] Thus NSF is
in an excellent position to continue to exert leadership in this area. In
addition to the work NSF can do directly, the agency can involve the
other science agencies, scientific societies, and universities. It can
also work within the international arena to encourage policy development
that fosters scientific collaboration.
1. NSF should conduct research on connectivity and
collaboration.
As discussed in Section 5, research is needed in the areas of (1)
monitoring and extending access to the net at the levels required for the
highest scientific productivity, (2) expanding educational uses of the
net, (3) online databases and software for data analysis and data
"mining," (4) evaluating the role of electronic publications, and (5)
using the net to increase scientific productivity.
2. NSF should conduct an internal review of its data
sharing policies with a view to encouraging online sharing.
The current edition of NSF's Grant Proposal Guide states that NSF
"expects investigators to share with other researchers, at no more
than incremental cost, and within a reasonable time, the data, samples,
physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered
in the course of the work." An internal review of the way in which
this policy has been administered should now be conducted, with a view to
sharpening the requirements in particular contexts and raising the
academic status of the data-sharing activity.
3. NSF should represent the concerns of the academic
science community aggressively within the national science policy arena,
to improve connectivity and collaboration.
NSF is one of many Federal agencies concerned with the sciences that are
taking action on these issues. NSF is a smaller agency, but because of
its stature within the scientific community and beyond, it can have a
very loud voice. Aggressive support of full exploitation of the
technological possibilities of advanced networking can carry along not
only other Federal agencies, but also the rest of the scientific
infrastructure. This includes scientific societies, journal publishers,
NAS and NRC committees, various ad hoc boards and study groups,
university substructures of all kinds, and science journalists and their
organizations. NSF can advocate in all these venues for both policy
changes and changes in attitudes:
-
Support broader access and connectivity through programs targeting
expansion of the networked population.
-
Support the adoption of emergent standards (or the continuation of
multiple competing standards) in such areas as network technology, data
interchange, and data and metadata file formats.
-
Support efforts to raise the value set by the scientific community on
data gathering and dissemination efforts.
-
Support the development of electronic means to assure confidentiality
and privacy of human research subjects.
-
Support research initiatives to enhance the interoperability of
networked software and technologies facilitating real-time operation of
remote scientific instrumentation.
-
Support curriculum changes aimed at training young scientists to take
advantage of advanced communications technologies.
4. NSF should continue working in the international
arena to foster similar policy approaches.
NSF should use its ability to represent American science in the
international arena to foster similar broad policy approaches to
facilitating connectivity. Wider access, more education, valorization of
data gathering and dissemination, enforcement of standards of data
exchange, and development of compatible policies on privacy and
confidentiality are the concerns of all nations with scientific programs.
Special attention should be given to encouraging developing nations to
end restraints on the free exchange of data and information and to build
anew or rebuild the telecommunications infrastructure to support these
efforts. Such policy initiatives can be carried to the International
Council of Scientific Unions, to NATO and UNESCO scientific bodies, to
OECD, and to bilateral and multilateral bodies concerned with scientific
collaboration.
Interagency collaboration in high-performance computing and communication
has already been established. The focus on scientific collaboration in
practice has not been made explicit, however, and the other agencies can
productively follow NSF's lead in this area. The national laboratories
are already important players in these fields, and care should be taken
to maintain these capabilities through shifts and changes in lab support
and missions.
University leaders in science have a responsibility to work to change the
reward/status system in the sciences in a way that will encourage the
modes of connection and collaboration that are in the process of becoming
established. It is important to raise these values in the face of
objections that may come from older segments of the scientific community
that may resist the investment in such changes. Scientific societies and
journal publishers can contribute to the value of online communication by
establishing online presences and becoming familiar with new needs for
methods of submission, peer review, data deposition, and other
community/society interactions that make best use of the net.
Finally, the workshop participants want to emphasize that what looks
today like an anarchic sprawl of chatter, gossip, data, preprints,
discussions, and bibliographies is actually the newest source of strength
and coherence in the worldwide scientific enterprise. Given conscious and
determined policy leadership, the world's scientific communities can
raise productivity to new heights and advance the capacities of humanity
to understand and, if necessary, alter the facts of nature.
Participants
Participant
|
Institution
|
Peter Arzberger
|
San Diego Supercomputer Center
|
Phil Bourne
|
San Diego Supercomputer Center
|
Barbara Buttenfield
|
University of Colorado
|
Richard Chinman
|
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
|
Peter Cornillon
|
University of Rhode Island
|
Alejandro Hinojos Corona
|
CICESE, Mexico
|
Deborah Day
|
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San
Diego
|
Carlos Duarte
|
CICESE, Mexico
|
Joel Genuth
|
American Institute of Physics
|
Mike Goodchild
|
University of California, Santa Barbara
|
Jim Gosz
|
Sevilleta Reserve, University of New Mexico
|
Henry T. Greeley
|
School of Law, Stanford University
|
Jane Maienschein
|
Arizona State University
|
Merry Maisel
|
San Diego Supercomputer Center
|
Petr Mateju
|
Institute of Sociology, Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences
|
Richard Rockwell
|
ICPSR, University of Michigan
|
John Walsh
|
University of Illinois at Chicago
|
Keith Watenpaugh
|
Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company
|
NSF Participant
|
|
William Bainbridge
|
Sociology
|
William Blanpied
|
International Programs
|
Hilleary Everist
|
Social and Behavioral Sciences
|
J.W. Harrington
|
Geography and Regional Sciences
|
Clifford Jacobs
|
Geophysical Sciences
|
Allan Kornberg
|
Social and Behavioral Sciences
|
Ron Overmann
|
History of Science
|
John Porter
|
Biological Databases
|
Gerald Selzer
|
Biological Instrumentation and Resources
|