Scientific Collaboratories
From a seven-category classification system conceived by http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/bos.html
Source: Bos, N., Zimmerman, A., Olson, J., Yew, J., Yerkie, J., Dahl, E., et. al. (2007). From shared databases to communities of practice: A taxonomy of collaboratories. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), article 16
Typology
All definitions and examples are from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/bos.html
This type of collaboratory's main function is to increase access to a scientific instrument. Shared Instrument collaboratories often provide remote access to expensive scientific instruments such as telescopes, which are often supplemented with videoconferencing, chat, electronic lab notebooks, or other communications tools.
Example: Observing time on the Keck Telescope is shared between astronomers from Keck's four funders: the University of California system, the California Institute of Technology, NASA, and the University of Hawaii. Each institution is allocated time in proportion to its financial contribution.
Community Data Systems
A Community Data System is an information resource that is created, maintained, or improved by a geographically-distributed community. The information resources are semi-public and of wide interest; a small team of people with an online filespace of team documents would not be considered a Community Data System. Model organism projects in biology are prototypical Community Data Systems.
Example: The Protein Databank (PDB) is the single worldwide repository for the processing and distribution of 3-D structure data of large molecules of proteins and nucleic acids
Open Community Contribution System
An Open Community Contribution System is an open project that aggregates efforts of many geographically separate individuals toward a common research problem. It differs from a Community Data System in that contributions come in the form of work rather than data. It differs from a Distributed Research Center in that its participant base is more open, often including any member of the general public who wants to contribute.
Example: The Open Mind project is an online system for collecting "common sense" judgments from volunteer participants ("netizens") via its website
Virtual Community of Practice
This collaboratory is a network of individuals who share a research area and communicate about it online. Virtual Communities may share news of professional interest, advice, techniques, or pointers to other resources online. Virtual Communities of Practice are different from Distributed Research Centers in that they are not focused on actually undertaking joint projects. The term "community of practice" is taken from Wegner and Lave (1998).
Example: Ocean.US is an electronic meeting place for researchers studying oceans, with a focus on U.S. coastal waters
Virtual Learning Community
This type of project's main goal is to increase the knowledge of participants but not necessarily to conduct original research. This is usually formal education, i.e., provided by a degree-granting institution, but can also be in-service training or professional development.
Example: The Ecological Circuitry Collaboratory (ECC) is an effort to "close the circuit" between empiricists and theoreticians in the ecological sciences and to create a group of quantitatively strong, young researchers.
Distributed Research Center
This collaboratory functions like a university research center but at a distance. It is an attempt to aggregate scientific talent, effort, and resources beyond the level of individual researchers. These centers are unified by a topic area of interest and joint projects in that area. Most of the communication is human-to-human.
Example: Inflammation and the Host Response to Injury is a large-scale collaborative program that aims to uncover the biological reasons why patients can have dramatically different outcomes after suffering similar traumatic injuries.
Community Infrastructure Project
Community Infrastructure Projects seek to develop infrastructure to further work in a particular domain. By infrastructure we mean common resources that facilitate science, such as software tools, standardized protocols, new types of scientific instruments, and educational methods. Community Infrastructure Projects are often interdisciplinary, bringing together domain scientists from multiple specialties, private sector contractors, funding officers, and computer scientists.
Example: The GriPhyN (Grid Physics Network) is a team of experimental physicists and information technology (IT) researchers planning to implement the first Petabyte-scale computational environments for data-intensive science.
More Information
The Science Of Collaboratories database (http://www.scienceofcollaboratories.org) contains 75 summaries of collaboratories that achieved some measure of success and analyses of the technology and other practices that enabled them. Additional information on this project and extended case studies will be published in a forthcoming book, Science on the Internet (Olson, Zimmerman, & Bos, 2007).
AIP Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. (1992). Phase I: High-Energy Physics. New York: American Institute of Physics. Retrieved August 4, 2006 from http://www.aip.org/history/pubslst.htm#collabs
AIP Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. (1995). Phase II: Space Science and Geophysics. College Park, MD: American Institute of Physics. Retrieved August 4, 2006 from http://www.aip.org/history/pubslst.htm#collabs
AIP Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. (1999). Phase III: Ground-Based Astronomy, Materials Science, Heavy-Ion and Nuclear Physics, Medical Physics, and Computer-Mediated Collaborations. College Park, MD: American Institute of Physics. Retrieved August 4, 2006 from http://www.aip.org/history/pubslst.htm#collabs