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Scientific Collaboration on the Internet

Online ISBN:
9780262281041
Print ISBN:
9780262151207
Publisher:
The MIT Press
Book

Scientific Collaboration on the Internet

Published online:
22 August 2013
Published in print:
31 October 2008
Online ISBN:
9780262281041
Print ISBN:
9780262151207
Publisher:
The MIT Press

Abstract

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. This book provides views of how new technology is enabling novel kinds of science and engineering collaboration. It offers commentary from 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 balance between presenting 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.

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