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E-Experiences of Social Scientists: Challenges and Opportunities in Embedding e-Research Applications for Communication and Collaboration in the Social Sciences
Dimitrina Spencer, Marina Jirotka
Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford
The development of the e-Social Sciences Grid is meant to provide social scientists with new opportunities for research strategies and more effective collaboration and communication between researchers and also between researchers and research stakeholders. The Grid could make it possible to combine datasets from multiple sources, it could offer visualization, modeling and analysis tools, including possibilities for combined qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The goals of the e-Social Science initiative could thus be summarized as: first, building a data infrastructure from diverse sources; second developing applications for data analysis; third, creating Virtual Research Environments (VRE) to support distributed collaboration. How do social scientists embrace these possibilities and do they consider them at all when planning a new research proposal or a new stage in their existing projects? Such questions enquire into the possibilities and barriers to embedding e-science in research practices.
We explore these possibilities and barriers from the point of view of the social scientists and their e-experiences. We introduce the concept of e-experience to account for a range of actions, events and processes including: gaining knowledge and information about e-science possibilities, adopting some of these on an ad hoc basis or in daily practices, discussing and debating e-science applications or ignoring them, networking, team building and project management practices. We propose to study experience through participant observation of social scientists' actual engagement with e-research, and through narrative analysis of past experiences. We will examine in what ways experience and its interpretation and rationalization to self, the team, and the institution, co-create a space for embedding or disembedding e-Research. We argue that understanding different e-experiences of social scientists may provide an insight into the possibility of embedding e-Research applications. Embedding, unlike random use or references to e-science, refers to embracing the applications as relevant and meaningful to research practices from the very conception of a project to its completion. We pose the question what might stop scholars from embedding e-Research applications if embedding may enhance work practices and outputs. We also explore in what ways embedding applications offers new ways of conducting research that take advantage of distributed resources and tools. Embedding occurs within a social context of individual and discipline-specific conventions such as, accepted data sharing and use within groups, conveying tacit knowledge of the research area and case study materials, use of common artifacts for data gathering and analysis, and the coordination of a research lifecycle. We argue that it is important to understand the social and political context of e-experiences surrounding the process of the embedding of applications in the social sciences. Amongst others, we analyze the beliefs about face-to-face scholarly sociality as indispensable and how it might be shaping e-experiences.
Thus, the paper is an in-depth and contextualised exploration of a range of e-experiences of social scientists from the moment of conceiving a research project, through the funding application phase, to the first stage of development of successfully funded projects. We explore a range of different experiences: from those who have integrated e-research tools in their research practices, to those who hardly, if ever, consider or employ such tools, from those who consistently use e-science applications to those who might employ them on an ad hoc basis. The data analyzed for this paper draw predominantly on ongoing research of social scientists at Oxford and other UK universities. The methodology for data collection consists of interviews and participant observation. We also include focus groups and an e-survey. We draw on the existing e-Research literature and on anthropology of everyday practice.
In the first part of the paper, we describe in detail the early histories of several projects in the social sciences to delineate the situations where the adoption of an e-research tool has been considered, and a decision about its routine adoption or special use has been taken or not. In the second part, by comparing different decision-making outcomes both as key events and as processes where e-research is embedded or considered but not embedded, we discuss the role of different factors shaping challenges and opportunities in embedding e-science applications.
In the third part of the paper, we focus particularly on the communication and collaboration process between developers and researchers, and on institutional and organizational constraints that shape decision-making about embedding e-research tools. Here, through focusing on the experience of interactions between developers and social scientists and the different gate-keepers between them, we search for the mechanisms of co-creation of successful or failing relationships. We focus in particular on how the individual and the personal relate to the social and the institutional.
We go on to discuss in detail the role of managers and administrators who are new arrivals in the development of social science projects and have become key actors in the opening/closing of spaces for e-science applications through their growing involvement in the project development. Here, we discuss how management practices and administration may inhibit or support communication and collaboration. In the final part of the paper we draw conclusions about the growing role of research managers and administrators in the development of research projects, the key role of funding bodies, and the training of researchers and wider institutional contexts, that present both challenges and opportunities to embedding e-science. We discuss the experiential aspect of embedding e-sciences in the social sciences and how it is managed, rationalized, justified and transformed.
