Increasingly, research in science and engineering is conducted in multidisciplinary distributed teams enabling greater access to a variety of resources. As cyberinfrastructure becomes integrated into research, there are accompanying changes in work practices, requisite skill sets, organizing structures and career trajectories. Research on these concomitant changes is in its earliest stages so it has focused predominantly on commonalities among the majority of scientists. However, previous literature has determined that there is often considerable variation in the ways that majority and minority groups within a field experience scientific work. Very little is know about the different experiences of minority group members working in multi-disciplinary, distributed collaborative research teams or about their distinctive work practices within those collaborative projects. As scientific and engineering research moves toward this new cyber-enabled collaborative model, understanding both majority and minority member experiences will be crucial to the design, development and deployment of appropriate cyberinfrastructure support tools and will have important implications for increasing participation among members of underrepresented groups. This research is a first step in identifying best practices in use so that all groups can be fully supported in scientific and engineering research collaborations.
This project investigates how women scientists engaged in collaborative, multidisciplinary research build and use interpersonal relationships and the effects of these relationships on their careers. Using ethnographic methods and narrative analysis, the research team will conduct a pilot study of researchers using large-scale databases in astronomy to identify everyday research practices, the organization of work, planning, career trajectories, and the transmission of knowledge to the next generation of scholars. They will focus on collaborative work practices, the design, maintenance, revision and interpretation of large-scale databases, their career strategies, and on mentoring activities. Further, it will shed light on whether underrepresented groups are more likely to succeed in new fields or using new methods and are more likely to engage in interdisciplinary research. If so, they may be a crucial asset in innovation and transformative science.
This research has important implications for both theory and practice. It investigates an area related to cyberinfrastructure use and team science and engineering that is currently understudied: How do minority group members use cyberinfrastructure and the emergent team science structure to achieve success? How can this information inform the development and refinement of the next generation of cyberinfrastructure? What steps can be taken to improve participation by members of underrepresented groups? New cyberinfrastructure tools have enabled transformative changes for some areas of science and engineering, but little is known about which of these changes differ for various groups and how each achieves success. Results of this project could enable us to design collaborative science and engineering projects that increase the participation of underrepresented groups and provide valuable information for the development of appropriate cyberinfrastructure to support a variety of work practices. Identifying the experiences of minority group members will enable funding agencies to better understand how to support and nurture the work required to meet future scientific and engineering challenges and improve national competitiveness.
