It is encouraging to see a number of inter-university collaborative efforts to network Internet researchers. This is certainly the spirit of the OII’s Summer Doctoral Programme, and I’ve just become aware of an initiative, called the Harvard-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group. The organizers note:

“The first Cyberscholar Working Group of the 2007-08 academic year will be held next Wednesday, October 3, at 6PM, hosted by the Yale Information Society Project.

The Cyberscholar Working Group is a collaboration between the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and the Comparative Media Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Techology. The working group is an opportunity for peer review and discussion of current projects submitted by a presenter. Discussion sessions are designed to facilitate advancements in the individual research of presenters and in turn encourage exposure among the participants to the multi-disciplinary features of the issues addressed by their own work.

We are fortunate to have two new presenters discussing recent research on the relationship of the Internet and computer technology to other aspects of society. Laura DeNardis of ISP will be presenting a portion of a forthcoming white paper, co-written with Eric Tam, entitled “Open Documents and Democracy: A Political Basis for Open Document Standards.” Corinna di Gennaro will present based in part on a forthcoming paper, co-written with William Dutton, entitled “Reconfiguring Friendships: Social Relationships and the Internet.”

Abstracts of the papers and biographies of the authors follow below. For more information, contact Chris Conley at cconley@cyber.law.harvard.edu.”

More universities should be undertaking similar efforts to support their Internet researchers.