This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This project develops and validates one or more lifecycle models of multidisciplinary scientific collaborations. Grounded in the theory of information worlds, this project analyzes social norms, social types, values and information behaviors to identify factors that best support the transition from discrete experiment-focused projects to long-term programs of scientific research. The research will investigate whether teams that integrate the norms and practices of their members? multiple external worlds into their internal team norms and practices have higher rates of discovery and innovation, are more productivity and are more willing to continue to work collaboratively. Lifecycle models will be developed from multiple-case studies of scientific teams using a distributed interdisciplinary scientific facility (the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory). These models will enable virtual multidisciplinary scientific teams to better exploit cyberinfrastructure to extend their lifecycles from discrete projects to the long-term programs of research required to solve complex scientific problems. They will also provide a theoretically-informed framework for future research on cyberenabled virtual organizations.
The lifecycle models developed in this research will advance both practical and theoretical knowledge. This research will show how distributed, multidisciplinary scientific and engineering teams evolve into ongoing collaborations. It will enhance team science effectiveness and improve the development of appropriate cyberinfrastructure tools by identifying a previously understudied set of collaboration barriers and enablers. Team members and virtual organization managers can use this information to design more productive and enduring collaborations. The results will be important to other national laboratories and to public and private sector scientific and engineering collaborations, promoting national scientific productivity and improving global competitiveness.
