Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Streamlined Request Services: The Integration Of Ils, Ill And Consortia Borrowing Systems, Gan Ye, Sally Bryant

Gan Ye

Ieee Istas13- People As Sensors: The Social Implications Of Living In A Smart World, Alexander Hayes, Katina Michael, Nick Rheinberger

Alexander Hayes Mr.

What is the technological trajectory of people wearing sensors? What are the benefits, risks and costs? What is the vibe going to be like at ISTAS13 with people like Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil attending? What do you hope to gain from the meeting? Can we foresee a time that all glasses will be embedded with sensors? What are the implications? E.g. in the higher education sector? What about the gathering of evidence by law enforcement? What is point of eye?

Managing The Public To Manage Data: Citizen Science And Astronomy, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Citizen Cyberscience Projects (CCPs) that recruit members of the public as volunteers to process and produce large datasets promise a great deal of benefits to scientists and science. However, if this promise is to be realised, and citizen science-produced datasets are to be widely-used by scientists, it is essential that these datasets win the trust of the scientific community. This task of securing credibility involves, in part, applying standard scientific procedures to clean-up datasets formed by volunteer contributions. However, the management of volunteers’ behaviour in terms of how they contribute also plays a significant role in improving both the quality …

Opening Up A Dark Habitat And Opening Up Data: The Co-Emergence Of Scientific Collaboration, Infrastructure For Data-Sharing, And Data-Sharing Practices, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Allied to the movement promoting Open Access publishing is the Open Data movement, which aims to facilitate and encourage the open sharing of research data amongst scientists across multiple disciplines and institutions. Studies of scientists’ data practices link barriers to data-sharing with lack of appropriate infrastructure, cultural issues regarding norms and reward structures, and lack of trust amongst researchers. However, there have been fewer studies of actual instances of successful data-sharing. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to the implications of successful data-sharing for the structures of collaborative scientific work.

This paper will present findings from a longitudinal ethnographic case …

Managing The Public To Manage Data: Citizen Science And Astronomy, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Citizen Cyberscience Projects (CCPs) that recruit members of the public as volunteers to process and produce large datasets promise a great deal of benefits to scientists and science. However, if this promise is to be realised, and citizen science-produced datasets are to be widely-used by scientists, it is essential that these datasets win the trust of the scientific community. This task of securing credibility involves, in part, applying standard scientific procedures to clean-up datasets formed by volunteer contributions. However, the management of volunteers’ behaviour in terms of how they contribute also plays a significant role in improving both the quality …

The Cloud Ate My Homework! Stay Organized Using Online Storage, Jenn Nolte

Jenn Nolte

Retaining Volunteers In Volunteer Computing Projects, Peter Darch, Annamaria Carusi

Peter Darch

Volunteer computing projects (VCPs) have been set up by groups of scientists to recruit members of the public who are asked to donate spare capacity on their personal computers to the processing of scientific data or computationally intensive models. VCPs serve two purposes: to acquire significant computing capacity and to educate the public about science. A particular challenge for these scientists is the retention of volunteers as there is a very high drop-out rate. This paper develops recommendations for scientists and software engineers setting up or running VCPs regarding which strategies to pursue in order to improve volunteer retention rates. …

Shared Understanding Of End-Users' Requirements In E-Science Projects, Peter Darch, Annamaria Carusi, Marina Jirotka

Peter Darch

The acquisition by developers of e-science applications of a thorough understanding of the requirements of end-users has been recognized as playing a critical role in the usability of such applications. However, there is another dimension to such an understanding that also plays an important role, namely the extent to which these developers converge on a shared understanding of these requirements. This paper considers why such a shared understanding is important, and highlights possible obstacles to this that may arise in the context of e-science projects. A research project, consisting of qualitative case studies of two projects, is being undertaken, with …

Undergraduate Programs In Information Science: A Survey Of Requirements And Goals, Colin Koteles, Caroline Haythornthwaite

Colin Koteles

Numerous new undergraduate programs have appeared in the past few years that focus on theories and practices of information science and information technology. As the global reliance on networked, digital information continues to grow, we can expect such programs to be enduring and common features of college and university undergraduate curricula. As educators and administrators consider establishing their own information studies (IS) programs, many are asking what is an IS program, and how do your create one? We surveyed online information related to existing undergraduate IS programs in the United States and Canada. Using quantitative and qualitative data about these …