World Wide Research
RESHAPING THE SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Edited by William H. Dutton and Paul W. Jeffreys
Foreword by Ian Goldin
Available from MIT Press
CONTRIBUTORS: Hal Abelson, Robert Ackland, Roger Barga, Tim Berners-Lee, Christine L. Borgman, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Alan Bowman, João Caraça, Gustavo Cardoso, Annamaria Carusi, Paul A. David, Grace de la Flor, Matthijs den Besten, David De Roure, Matthew Dovey, Ricardo B. Duque, William H. Dutton, Paul N. Edwards, Rita Espanha, Michael A. Fraser, Jenny Fry, Ian Goldin, Wendy Hall, Tony Hey, Steven J. Jackson, Paul Jeffreys, Marina Jirotka, Jane Kaye, Cory Knobel, Julia Lane, Xiaoming Li, Sharon Lloyd, Christine Madsen, Andrew Martin, Sandro Mendonça, Eric T. Meyer, Kieron O’Hara, Savas Parastatidis, Michael Parker, Justine Pila, Tina Piper, Rob Procter, Ralph Schroeder, Nigel Shadbolt, David Shotton, Wesley Shrum, Michael Spence, John Taylor, Mike Thelwall, David Vaver, Andrew Warr, John Wilbanks, Yorick Wilks, Paul Wouters, Marcus Antonius Ynalvez, and Jonathan J. H. Zhu
Overview
Experts examine ways in which the use of increasingly powerful and versatile digital information and communication technologies are transforming research activities across all disciplines.
Advances in information and communication technology are transform- ing the way scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines. The use of increasingly powerful and versatile computer-based and networked systems promises to change research activity as profoundly as the mobile phone, the Internet, and email have changed everyday life. This book offers a comprehensive and accessible view of the use of these new approaches—called “e-Research”—and their ethical, legal, and institutional implications. The contributors, leading scholars from a range of disciplines, focus on how e-Research is reshaping not only how research is done but also, and more important, its outcomes. By anchoring their discussion in specific examples and case studies, they identify and analyze a promising set of practical developments and results associated with e-Research innovations.
The contributors, who include Geoffrey Bowker, Christine Borgman, Paul Edwards, Tim Berners-Lee, and Hal Abelson, explain why and how e-Research activity can reconfigure access to networks of information, expertise, and experience, changing what researchers observe, with whom they collaborate, how they share information, what methods they use to report their findings, and what knowledge is required to do this. They discuss both the means of e-Research (new research-centered computational networks) and its purpose (to improve the quality of world-wide research).
William H. Dutton is Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor of Internet Studies, and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College at the University of Oxford. Paul W. Jeffreys, formerly Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre, is Director of IT at the University of Oxford, Professor of Computing, and Professorial Fellow of Keble College at the University of Oxford.
June 2010
7 x 9, 424 pp., 8 illus., $33.00/£24.95 paper ␣ 978-0-262-51373-9
We had a great deal of help putting together World Wide Research. Our colleagues within e-Horizons and OeSS discussed this book project at each stage in its development. They included Annamaria Carusi, Paul David, Matthijs den Besten, Marina Jirotka, Eric Meyer, Michael Parker, Justine Pila, Tina Piper, Lucy Power, Ralph Schroeder, Michael Spence, Anne Trefethen, David Vaver, and Steve Woolgar. While most of these focused their contributions on particular chapters and essays, they were all major contributors to the very conception and production of the volume.
Miranda Llewellyn within the Office of the Director of Information Technology at the University of Oxford made a valuable contribution to the management of multiple online and offline versions of dozens of manuscripts over years of their preparation.
Malcolm Peltu, a London-based editorial consultant, helped us to review and edit manuscripts into a uniform style and format, enabling us to provide a far more integrated and coherent volume than would have been possible without his editorial contributions. His work was taken forward by David Sutcliffe, an editor at the OII, who put the many manuscripts into shape for MIT Press.
David has assembled a Web page that gives an unusual look behind the scenes of its production. Do take a look at some of the stages involved on the OII site, from the perspective of OII’s invaluable editor, David Sutcliffe.