Interoperability Strategies for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: A Comparative Study

科学网络基础设施的互操作性策略：比较研究

• 批准号: 0433369
• 负责人: Geoffrey Bowker
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Santa Clara University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-09-01 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0433369&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Interoperability; Strategies; Scientific; Cyberinfrastructure; Comparative

This comparative study uses ethnographic, interview, and content data analysis to provide a situated social and organizational comparison of three scientific projects with distinct approaches to developing cyberinfrastructures and achieving data interoperability. The three projects are GEON (http://www.geongrid.org), a geosciences project using a national distributed storage broker to create data sharing across multiple disciplines through developing shared ontologies; LTER (http://lternet.edu/), a long-term ecological program using metadata standards to federate data across a single discipline; and Ocean Informatics, an oceanographic team building community and designing a local metadata standard to bridge key data collections to a national standard. Intellectual Need: As new scientific cyberinfrastructures emerge, a central question is how to share data across multiple distributed organizational and social contexts. There have been many suggestions for technical fixes for this pressing concern (particularly important since some of today's great political questions, such as preserving biodiversity and developing a sustainable relationship with the environment pivot on the ability to federate data across organizational and disciplinary contexts). However, there has been little study - and no comparative study - of the organizational and social dimensions of differing interoperability strategies. The working hypothesis for this project, drawing on research in the field of social informatics over the past fifteen years, is that creation of a common shared data infrastructure entails complex negotiations involving the relative institutional weight of the different actors (institutions have a range of motives for subscribing or not to interoperability strategies), the nature of their disciplinary organization (in particular reward structures; openness to interdisciplinary work; history of use of large datasets) and the nature of their domain work (degree of commitment to long-term data storage and re-use; decay rate of data over time; need to draw on large federate datasets). This study will develop grounded understandings of the organizational complexity in producing shared scientific cyberinfrastructure and the costs and benefits of three interoperability approaches: metadata standards, ontologies, and community-driven approaches. Broader Impact: The development of scientific cyberinfrastructure is vital for this country's future economic prosperity and for its ability to respond to key policy issues with scientific and technical dimensions. Cyberinfrastructure is a large-scale contemporary investment; this study will help inform the decisions that today are determining future structural outcomes. At the level of science policy, the project will facilitate understandings of the organizational and social dimensions in building shared infrastructure. The research will produce a policy white paper on data communities and scientific cyberinfrastructure and suggest guidelines for the ongoing formative evaluation of infrastructure development activities. As these new communication tools develop, there is a need for educational programs to sensitize domain scientists, computer scientists and science policy workers to social and organizational issues. The project will produce, as a centerpiece to a Masters level program in cyberinfrastructure, a graduate course about its development, as well as a secondary school lesson module for use in an educational partnership. A 'Cyberinfrastructure Page' website, modeled on 'Inquiry Page' (http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/), will incorporate the course and module and allow this project to share results first with the partner communities and then across communities. This will provide the kernel of a resource site for researchers and practitioners in the emergent field of scientific cyberinfrastructure, to share findings and best practices and to engage in collective problem solving.This project is supported by an award from the FY 2004 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD). Coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards involves all NSF directorates and offices.

这项比较研究使用民族志，访谈和内容数据分析，为三个科学项目提供了定位的社会和组织比较，采用不同的方法来开发网络基础结构并实现数据互操作性。 这三个项目是Geon（http://www.geongrid.org），这是一个使用国家分布式存储经纪人的地理科学项目，通过开发共享本体论来创建跨多个学科的数据共享； LTER（http://lternet.edu/），这是一种长期的生态计划，使用元数据标准来通过单个学科结合数据；和海洋信息学，一个海洋团队建设社区，并设计了当地的元数据标准，以将关键数据收集桥接到国家标准。 智力需求：随着新的科学网络基础结构的出现，一个核心问题是如何在多个分布式组织和社会环境中共享数据。 对于这种紧迫的关注，已经有许多有关技术修复的建议（尤其重要（因为当今的某些伟大的政治问题，例如保存生物多样性，并与环境建立可持续的关系，这是关于在组织和纪律环境中联合数据的能力的枢纽）。 但是，几乎没有关于不同互操作性策略的组织和社会维度的研究（也没有比较研究）。 该项目的工作假设在过去十五年来借鉴社会信息学领域的研究，是，创建一个共同的共享数据基础架构需要进行复杂的谈判，涉及不同参与者的相对制度权重的复杂谈判（机构具有一系列的动机，可以进行跨性别组织的范围，以奖励其跨性别的组织；数据集）及其域工作的性质（对长期数据存储和重复使用的承诺程度；随着时间的推移数据衰减率；需要利用大型联邦数据集）。 这项研究将在产生共享的科学网络基础设施以及三种互操作方法的成本和收益方面对组织复杂性进行基本的理解：元数据标准，本体和社区驱动的方法。 更广泛的影响：科学网络基础设施的发展对于该国未来的经济繁荣以及其具有科学和技术方面的关键政策问题的能力至关重要。 网络基础设施是一项大规模的当代投资；这项研究将有助于告知今天决定未来结构性结果的决定。 在科学政策的层面上，该项目将促进对建立共享基础设施的组织和社会层面的理解。 这项研究将制定有关数据界和科学网络基础设施的政策白皮书，并建议对基础设施发展活动进行持续形成性评估的指南。随着这些新的交流工具的发展，需要教育计划将领域科学家，计算机科学家和科学政策工作者敏感到社会和组织问题。 该项目将作为网络基础设施中的硕士级别计划的核心，涉及其发展的研究生课程，以及用于教育合作伙伴关系的中学课程模块。以“查询页面”为模型的“网络基础结构页”（http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/）将结合课程和模块，并允许该项目首先与合作伙伴社区共享结果和模块。 这将为科学网络基础设施新兴领域的研究人员和从业人员提供资源网站的内核，分享发现和最佳实践，并参与集体问题解决。 HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理涉及所有NSF局和办公室。