Cummings, Jonathan.N. and Kiesler, Sara. 2005. "Collaborative Research across Disciplinary and Organizational Boundaries." Social Studies of Science 35/5: 703-722
This paper by Sara Kielser, professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Jonathan N. Cummings, professor at Duke University, discusses the problems associated with knowledge-sharing in large project involving multiple disciplines and universities. Their study was based on 62 scientific collaborations supported by the Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence programme of the US National Science Foundation in 1998 and 1999. The aim was to study the different kinds of techniques used to bridge distances and how effective they were.
Multidisciplinary projects are beneficial in that they bring in expertise from various field and from people trained in various environments. At the same time, physical distance, difference in working styles, use of different softwares, etc. could create barriers in such projects. The questionnaire of the study asked scientists what mode of communication they used and what the outcomes were. The outcomes were classified as new ideas/knowledge (patents, publications), tools for research (software, databases), training of scientists and engineers (PhD students, undergrads), and outreach and public understanding of science (school and community projects etc.)
The results showed that most of the projects used the traditional methods of faculty supervised tasks (84%), seminars (55%) etc. while the use of technology like conference calls (13%), online discussions (8%) etc. was minimal. The major discipline involved were computer science (16%) and electrical engineering (13%) while basic sciences like biology (8%) and maths (9%) had limited representation. The authors also investigated the relation between the number of Principal Investigator Universities and the coordination mechanisms used and found that to a statistically significant degree, more PI universities involved in a project predicted fewer coordination mechanism used in that project. The authors were led to conclude that distance and organizational boundaries still interfered with communication.
Having more PI universities was also found to be negatively associated with the generation of new ideas/knowledge, student training and project outreach. In this context, the authors call for new research into the theories of innovation and social networks; creation of new technology for ongoing conversation, reducing information overload, support simultaneous group decision-making etc.; and policy changes like longer-term funding to build collaborations, budget revisions to support such infrastructure, and better awareness regarding 'proposal pressure' amongst the researchers.
The idea of communism is reflected well in collaborative research as you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is a little off the topic, but some disciplines are considered to be more "advanced and rigorous" and hence given more precedence over the others. In the paper you presented too, not much of the social sciences is mentioned.
I agree that the Humanities and Social Sciences will not be able to contribute much in the terms of technicalities and the mechanics of a research. Any Innovation requires brainstorming from the disciplines of natural or "hard sciences" but must not the scientific community also take into account what the social or economic implications of such an innovation will be ? It could prevent certain social catastrophes. For example, how a certain invention could cause displacements in the labour force?
Also, as you pointed out large-scale collaborative research and knowledge sharing itself seems to be in need of technological innovations in order to facilitate it.