World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities
William H. Dutton and Paul W. Jeffreys
Abstract
Advances in information and communication technology are transforming 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 an accessible view of the use of these new approaches—called “e-Research”—and their ethical, legal, and institutional implications. The contributors focus on how e-Research is reshaping not only how research is done but also its outcomes. By ... More
Advances in information and communication technology are transforming 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 an accessible view of the use of these new approaches—called “e-Research”—and their ethical, legal, and institutional implications. The contributors focus on how e-Research is reshaping not only how research is done but also 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 worldwide research).
Keywords:
information technology,
communication technology,
e-Research,
ethical implications,
legal implications,
institutional implications,
outcomes,
case studies,
Geoffrey Bowker,
Christine Borgman
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262014397 |
Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262014397.001.0001 |