Distributed collaborative science requires new and powerful technologies to support communication, data sharing and aggregation, access to remote instruments, and large-scale data analysis. The infrastructure necessary to support this kind of science is called cyberinfrastructure. There has been increasing recognition of the importance of the human infrastructure to cyberinfrastructure, the arrangements of organizations and actors that must be brought into alignment in order for work to be accomplished. Infrastructures are complex systems that present challenges that cannot be addressed by either technological or social development alone. A sociotechnical systems approach is necessary to understand how to create long-term, sustainable cyberinfrastructures in order to advance scientific knowledge and practice.
This project will address these challenges by undertaking a comparative ethnographic study of two large cyberinfrastructure building and research and learning organizations. Each of these organizations hosts and participates in multiple cyberinfrastructure projects of varying size and complexity. Qualitative research methods will include participant-observation and semi-structured interviews to understand how work practices change and develop over time. The proposed research will: 1) describe how human and technical resources are synergistically re-used across cyberinfrastructure projects, groups, personal networks, and organizations; 2) describe how reuse is encouraged or discouraged by particular social or technical arrangements; 3) describe and analyze how these organizations manage their identities, structures, and boundaries to support organizational learning and innovation; and 4) develop new conceptual models that frame the relationships among organizational-level structures, interpersonal networks, and the production of cyberinfrastructure. Empirically this project will provide an understanding of how cyberinfrastructure centers are approaching the challenges of designing for the emergent, distributed, and long-term. Conceptually this project will develop a framework for understanding: 1) the incremental alignment and realignment of people, processes, and tools; and 2) how these alignments play out: within cyberinfrastructure building organizations, between cyberinfrastructure building organizations, and in collaborations between organizations (or organizational sub-groups), specific projects and their domain communities. In regards to broader impacts, by contributing to a more sophisticated understanding of cyberinfrastructure development, this research will stimulate and support the development of future cyberinfrastructure. Collaborations among institutions conducting work on social aspects of cyberinfrastructure will be established to more efficiently define common concerns. This project will provide opportunities to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers by involving undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students. To make innovations more broadly useful, findings will be presented at multi- and interdisciplinary conferences and workshops and published in formats that will be useful to policy-makers.
