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Human Social Dynamics:
Interoperability Strategies for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure:
The Comparative Interoperability Project (2004-2007) initiates asituated social and organizational comparison of three scientificinformation infrastructures deploying different approaches to datainteroperability. While the issue of interoperability remains addressedprimarily as a technical one – e.g. in terms of a strategic choice oftechnical standard for data coding (e.g. classifications, metadata,ontology), we consider interoperability strategies as specificconfigurations of technical commitment, community involvement,and organizational structure. These strategies, implicit or explicit inproject visions, represent a critical factor in subsequent development.In other words, while deploying a particular interoperability strategy interms of technical direction, an information infrastructure project alsounfolds strategies of community mobilization and organizationalarrangement.
Cyberinfrastructure is the coordinated aggregate of software,hardware and other technologies, as well as human expertise,required to support current and future discoveries in science andengineering. The challenge of cyberinfrastructure is to integraterelevant and often disparate resources to provide a useful, usable,and enabling framework for research and discovery characterized bybroad access and “end-to-end” coordination.
*Final Report: NSF SBE-CISE Workshop on Cyberinfrastructureand the Social Sciences”, F. Berman and H. Brady, available athttp://www.sdsc.edu/sbe/
Interoperability includes a broad range of work, includingcoordinating collaborations between diverse expert communities,building consensus on technical directions, securing consent fromthe domain, aligning interfaces with already existing communitypractices or training user populations. This kind of work iscommon to even the most technically centered interoperabilityendeavor, but it remains difficult to credit this crucial work andoften remains beyond discursive capacity of a community.
Interoperability is the unproblematic movement of data andinformation across time, hardware/software, visualization,disciplines necessary for reuse of data and integration ofinformation. Achieving data interoperability is understood here as aprocess that aims at information assemblage and sharing in order toenable reuse by various people, across diverging disciplines andacross long periods of time.
*Initial Report: Comparative Interoperability Project:Configurations of Community, Technology, Organization. D.Ribes,K.S.Baker, F.Millerand, and G.C.Bowker. Joint Conference onDigital Libraries, 2005. Available at http://interoperability.ucsd.edu
Our research does not seek to produce a new sphere of ‘socialaction’ within cyberinfrastructure but rather to identify andenable action within already existing socio-technical work.
Our research approach makes use of the analytical frames of groundedtheory and action research drawing on methods of ethnography andcollaborative design. Our study makes use of ethnographic methods suchas interviews, document analysis, participant observation, andcommunity collaboration in order to develop a comparative perspectivethrough cross case analysis (Strauss, 1987). We seek an expandedvocabulary for interoperability of data and communities as well as for theroles of technology and participants supporting informationenvironments.
We use our particular project configuration of interdisciplinaryparticipants to address interoperability strategies and seek opportunitiesto contribute to the communities with which we work. We presentexamples here of work done in collaboration with the communities withwhich we work.
The CIP project considers a collaborative interdisciplinary team as bothan interoperability strategy. The collaborative participants andcommunities are requisite for posing as well as addressingcontemporary cyberinfrastructure issues. Our team purposely includesscience studies, historian of science, sociology, communication studies,environmental science, information management, and communities ofpractice expertise.
GEON is a cyberinfrastructure for the US geo-sciencesaimed at providing scientific data and resource sharingservices to a broad range of disciplines to ensure a moreintegrated picture of earth processes (Keller, 2003).
LTER is a federated network of biome sites with aninformation infrastructure for ecological sciences thataims at enabling inter-disciplinary collaboration andpreserving data for the long-term (Hobbie et al., 2003).
Ocean Informatics is a nascent initiative for the oceansciences based at UCS Scripps Institution ofOceanography that aims at providing a set of resourcesincluding shared scientific data and a design environmentfor learning, tool sharing and participatory design (Bakeret al, 2005).
Florence MillerandLCHC/Science StudiesUniversity of California, San DiegoLa Jolla, CA 92093, [email protected]
David RibesSociology/Science StudiesUniversity of California, San DiegoLa Jolla, CA 92093, [email protected]
Karen S. BakerScripps Institution of OceanographyUniversity of California, San DiegoLa Jolla, CA 92093 [email protected]
Geoffrey C. BowkerCenter for Science, Technology & SocietySanta Clara UniversitySanta Clara, CA 95053 [email protected]
Introduction
Concepts, Methods, and Team
Three case studies
Care with framing the questions
Care with framing the approaches
Considering interoperability strategies & cyberinfrastructure
While deploying interoperability strategies (as technical direction,community mobilization, and organizational structure) scientists,technologists, data and information managers are actively engaged indefinition and design, so that a major part of their work consists preciselyin the stabilization of these distributions, embedding them into technicalartifacts, organizational arrangements and community representatives. Anunderstanding of cyberinfrastructure as a process in addition toconfigurations allows for an analysis with a multi-dimensionalunderstanding of its dynamic features.
Care with the units of analysis
In summary: there is a need for articulation work
The Value of Technologist-Social ScientistPartnerships
Why Technologists Need Social Scientists& / or
Why Social Scientists Need Technologists
Science Today is Technology-enabled
Science Today is Collaboration-enabled
Long-termSociotechnical View
Technology is More than Computers It is networks and grids incorporating
•Networks•Visualization•Data storage•Remote instruments•Sensors•Supercomputers, servers, laptops, handheld devices, etc.
• Integrated software systems provide the “glue”
It is a range of factors integrating•Technical
•Tools: Sensors, Digital Devices•Tool Access: Data Storage•Information Access: Networks•Information Synthesis: Visualization
•Sociotechnical•Data Organizational units: Archives, Repositories, Collections•Social Organizational Units: People•Technical Interoperability: Data•Social Interoperability: Communication, Work Practices
•Educational
• Integrated information environment provides the “glue”
Technology Use is More than Computers
NSF and the Grid Vision: Integrated Cyberinfrastructure• Cyberinfrastructure isfoundation-wide initiative to develop“infrastructure based upondistributed computer, informationand communication technologies”
• Focus of continuing discussionamong all NSF directorates,science community
•Cyberinfrastructure isfoundation-wide initiative to develop“infrastructure based upon use ofdistributed computer, informationand communication technologies”
• Focus of continuingdiscussion across multiplescientific communities•Focus on the process ofcreating the products
NSF Vision: Technosocial CyberinfrastructureVision &
Language
Communities &Practices
Organization &Roles
“EML is successfulsince it has been adopted by the IT
and domain science community.”
(The developers point of view)
“EML is not yet successfulsince it requires localre-development activities.”
(The enactors point of view)
Care with multiple stories
Particular technical solutions bring particular cognitive divisions of labor. On tologies inGEON are creating interfaces between domain scientist representatives and informationtechnologists while metadata wihin LTER creates interfaces between informationmanagers and domain scientists.
TraditionalTechnical View
Long-termSociotechnical View
TraditionalTechnical View
Long-termSociotechnical View
TraditionalTechnical View
Long-termSociotechnical View
TraditionalTechnical View
With strategic use of collaborative design, a mutuallyinformative dynamic is created influencing practices ofsocial science and environmental science - analternative to more traditional concepts of intervention.
BDEIHSD
Social Informatics
Infrastructuring
Science Today is Technology-enabled
