Workshop 4: Mapping e-Social Science and Community Engagement

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Alex Voss, Rob Procter, Peter Halfpenny , Marzieh Asgari-Targhi, Meik Poschen, Simon C. Lin , Eric Yen

Abstract

The aim of this workshop is to define a mechanism for mapping the e-(social) science community, its activities and impact with a view to improving approaches to fostering uptake and achieving sustainability.

Background

As e-Social Science matures and as we consider how it can become part of the everyday working life of social scientists, we need to understand the mechanisms of adoption and the factors that influence the uptake of e-Infrastructures. We also need to measure the impact of investments in e-Social Science on research practice and research outputs in order to inform the future direction of the e-Social Science agenda.

The aim of this workshop is to discuss approaches to keeping track of e-Social Science activities, and its impact within the Social Sciences and wider society. This proposal follows on from a workshop held at the 3rd International Conference on e-Social Science in Ann Arbor where we discussed this topic with colleagues from the US and elsewhere (e.g., Taiwan and New Zealand). While there was unanimous agreement that the case for mapping e-Social Science was sound, we lacked clear ideas about practical ways of operationalising this activity.

Consequently, we would like to take this project forward by discussing concrete approaches including the use of social networking sites, web-mining or methods inspired by the semantic web. We will build on experience gained in a number of projects that have been active over the last year or have recently concluded.

The EU-funded AVROSS project has investigated requirements and options for accelerating the transition from traditional research to virtual research organisations through e-infrastructures in the social sciences and the arts and humanities. The e-Uptake project has conducted interviews with members of UK research communities (across all disciplines) to establish the level of uptake of e-Infrastructure services as well as map barriers and identify enablers of uptake. In the context of a small grant awarded by the British Academy and the National Science Council of Taiwan, we have been exploring the potential for collaboration in e-Social Science between Taiwan and the UK .

Aims of the Session

The aim of this workshop is to identify a practical way of mapping e-Social Science activities and its impact. We will seek to identify potential funding sources to support the implementation of mechanisms for this and to make the effort sustainable in the long term.

Session Format

The session will kick off with a short summary of the previous workshop and activities since then. Following this, we will present different technical and organisational approaches to mapping, including work we have done on social networking, web mining and use of semantic web technologies. The remaining time will be used for discussing the respective merits of these approaches and possible ways of implementing them as a service to the e-Science community. We would like to limit the workshop to half a day and 15 attendees. We would require a data projector and a flip chart.

Envisaged Outcomes

The outcome of this workshop will be a roadmap towards implementing sustainable mechanisms for mapping e-Social Science. The results of this workshop will be fed into a subsequent workshop on Profiling UK e-Research: Mapping Communities and Measuring Impacts at the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting (Edinburgh, September 2008) as well as the work of the EU-funded EUAsiaGrid project.

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