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.

这项比较研究使用人种学、访谈和内容数据分析，对三个科学项目进行情境社会和组织比较，这些项目采用不同的方法来开发网络基础设施和实现数据互操作性。 这三个项目分别是GEON（http://www.geongrid.org），这是一个地球科学项目，使用国家分布式存储代理通过开发共享本体来创建跨多个学科的数据共享； LTER (http://lternet.edu/)，一个长期生态计划，使用元数据标准来跨单一学科联合数据；海洋信息学，一个海洋学团队建设社区，设计本地元数据标准，将关键数据收集与国家标准联系起来。 智力需求：随着新的科学网络基础设施的出现，一个中心问题是如何在多个分布式组织和社会环境中共享数据。 对于这一紧迫问题，人们提出了许多技术修复建议（尤其重要，因为当今的一些重大政治问题，例如保护生物多样性和发展与环境的可持续关系，都依赖于跨组织和学科背景联合数据的能力）。 然而，对于不同互操作性策略的组织和社会层面的研究很少，也没有比较研究。 该项目的工作假设借鉴了过去十五年社会信息学领域的研究，即创建一个共同的共享数据基础设施需要进行复杂的谈判，涉及不同参与者的相对机构权重（机构有一系列动机）订阅或不订阅互操作性策略）、其学科组织的性质（特别是奖励结构；对跨学科工作的开放性；使用大型数据集的历史）以及其领域工作的性质（对长期数据存储的承诺程度）和重复使用；数据随时间的衰减率；需要利用大型联邦数据集）。 这项研究将对生成共享科学网络基础设施的组织复杂性以及元数据标准、本体论和社区驱动方法这三种互操作性方法的成本和收益形成有根据的理解。 更广泛的影响：科学网络基础设施的发展对于这个国家未来的经济繁荣以及从科学和技术层面应对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；这项研究将有助于为今天决定未来结构结果的决策提供信息。 在科学政策层面，该项目将促进对建设共享基础设施的组织和社会层面的理解。 该研究将编写一份关于数据社区和科学网络基础设施的政策白皮书，并为正在进行的基础设施开发活动形成性评估提出指导方针。随着这些新的通信工具的发展，需要教育计划来提高领域科学家、计算机科学家和科学政策工作者对社会和组织问题的敏感度。 该项目将制作一个关于其开发的研究生课程，以及一个用于教育合作伙伴关系的中学课程模块，作为网络基础设施硕士学位课程的核心。以“查询页面”(http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/) 为蓝本的“网络基础设施页面”网站将合并课程和模块，并允许该项目首先与合作伙伴社区共享结果，然后在社区之间共享结果。 这将为新兴科学网络基础设施领域的研究人员和从业者提供资源网站的核心，以分享研究结果和最佳实践并参与集体问题解决。该项目得到了 2004 财年 NSF 全范围竞赛奖项的支持关于人类和社会动力学（HSD）。 HSD 竞赛和 HSD 奖项组合的协调管理涉及所有 NSF 理事会和办公室。