Conceptualizing and advancing research networking systems

Science in general, and biomedical research in particular, is becoming more collaborative. As a result, collaboration with the right individuals, teams, and institutions is increasingly crucial for scientific progress. We propose Research Networking Systems (RNS) as a new type of system designed to help scientists identify and choose collaborators, and suggest a corresponding research agenda. The research agenda covers four areas: foundations, presentation, architecture, and evaluation. Foundations includes project-, institution- and discipline-specific motivational factors; the role of social networks; and impression formation based on information beyond expertise and interests. Presentation addresses representing expertise in a comprehensive and up-to-date manner; the role of controlled vocabularies and folksonomies; the tension between seekers' need for comprehensive information and potential collaborators' desire to control how they are seen by others; and the need to support serendipitous discovery of collaborative opportunities. Architecture considers aggregation and synthesis of information from multiple sources, social system interoperability, and integration with the user's primary work context. Lastly, evaluation focuses on assessment of collaboration decisions, measurement of user-specific costs and benefits, and how the large-scale impact of RNS could be evaluated with longitudinal and naturalistic methods. We hope that this article stimulates the human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and related communities to pursue a broad and comprehensive agenda for developing research networking systems.

[1]  Hiroaki Ogata,et al.  Computer Supported Social Networking For Augmenting Cooperation , 2001, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[2]  Judith S. Olson,et al.  From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[3]  Paul Thompson,et al.  An Inductive Search System: Theory, Design, and Implementation , 1986, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[4]  M. Lobo,et al.  Competent jerks, lovable fools, and the formation of social networks. , 2005, Harvard business review.

[5]  David W. McDonald,et al.  Social matching: A framework and research agenda , 2005, TCHI.

[6]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  Relationships and Tasks in Scientific Research Collaboration , 1987, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[7]  Charles Cole,et al.  Information as Process: The Difference Between Corroborating Evidence and 'Information' in Humanistic Research Domains , 1997, Inf. Process. Manag..

[8]  T. D. Wilson,et al.  Models in information behaviour research , 1999, J. Documentation.

[9]  P. Mattessich,et al.  Collaboration: What Makes It Work- A Review of Research Literature on Factors Influencing Successful Collaboration , 1992 .

[10]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  The Zephyr Help Instance: promoting ongoing activity in a CSCW system , 1996, CHI.

[11]  Mary Beth Rosson,et al.  Evaluating computer-supported cooperative work: models and frameworks , 2004, CSCW.

[12]  P. Mattessich.  Collaboration: What Makes It Work , 2001 .

[13]  Bart Selman,et al.  Referral Web: combining social networks and collaborative filtering , 1997, CACM.

[14]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  Just talk to me: a field study of expertise location , 1998, CSCW '98.

[15]  Piet Kommers,et al.  Online knowledge communities: future trends and research issues , 2004, Int. J. Web Based Communities.

[16]  Won-Kyung Sung,et al.  Finding Topic-centric Identified Experts based on Full Text Analysis , 2007, FEWS.

[17]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[18]  Margaret Grey,et al.  Models of inter-institutional collaboration to build research capacity for reducing health disparities. , 2008, Nursing outlook.

[19]  David R. Millen,et al.  Identity management: multiple presentations of self in facebook , 2007, GROUP.

[20]  E. Zerhouni.  The NIH Roadmap , 2003, Science.

[21]  Susan J. Winter,et al.  Entrepreneurial Alertness and Opportunity Identification: Where Are We Now? , 2009 .

[22]  Hector Garcia-Molina,et al.  Improving search in peer-to-peer networks , 2002, Proceedings 22nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

[23]  Bart Selman,et al.  The Hidden Web , 1997, AI Mag..

[24]  P. Adler,et al.  Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept , 2002 .

[25]  Somchai Numprasertchai,et al.  Managing knowledge through collaboration: multiple case studies of managing research in university laboratories in Thailand , 2005 .

[26]  Yunhao Liu,et al.  EOS: expertise oriented search using social networks , 2007, WWW '07.

[27]  Jonathon N. Cummings,et al.  Collaborative Research Across Disciplinary and Organizational Boundaries , 2005 .

[28]  Michael D. Mann.  Some Job Hunters Are What They Post , 2007 .

[29]  K. Gegenfurtner,et al.  Design Issues in Gaze Guidance Under review with ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction , 2009 .

[30]  W. Hamilton,et al.  The Evolution of Cooperation , 1984 .

[31]  Christopher Freeman,et al.  Prometheus Bound: science in a dynamic steady state , 1995, European Review.

[32]  Irma Becerra-Fernandez,et al.  Searching for experts on the Web: A review of contemporary expertise locator systems , 2006, TOIT.

[33]  Lucy A. Suchman,et al.  A framework for studying research collaboration , 1986, CSCW '86.

[34]  Jonathon N. Cummings,et al.  Who collaborates successfully?: prior experience reduces collaboration barriers in distributed interdisciplinary research , 2008, CSCW.

[35]  Stephen J. H. Yang,et al.  A social network-based system for supporting interactive collaboration in knowledge sharing over peer-to-peer network , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[36]  D. Smith.  (On) Self-Presentation , 1989 .

[37]  Virginia Gewin,et al.  Collaboration: Social networking seeks critical mass , 2010 .

[38]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  QuME: a mechanism to support expertise finding in online help-seeking communities , 2007, UIST.

[39]  Mark S. Granovetter.  The Strength of Weak Ties , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[40]  J. Clarke,et al.  Medicine , 1907, Bristol medico-chirurgical journal.

[41]  G. Melin.  Pragmatism and self-organization: Research collaboration on the individual level , 2000 .

[42]  M. F. Fox,et al.  Independence and Cooperation in Research. The Motivations and Costs of Collaboration. , 1984 .

[43]  S ButlerBrian,et al.  Conceptualizing and advancing research networking systems , 2012 .

[44]  Stefano Borgo,et al.  Interfacing Ontologies and Lexical Resources , 2005, IJCNLP.

[45]  Narinder Singh,et al.  Unifying heterogeneous information models , 1998, CACM.

[46]  G. Olson,et al.  From Laboratories to Collaboratories: A New Organizational Form for Scientific Collaboration , 1997 .

[47]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management , 2002 .

[48]  James D. Myers,et al.  Collaboratories: Doing Science on the Internet , 1996, Computer.

[49]  Eric A. von Hippel,et al.  How Open Source Software Works: 'Free' User-to-User Assistance? , 2000 .

[50]  Brian S. Butler,et al.  To disclose or not: publicness in social networking sites , 2011, Inf. Technol. People.

[51]  J. Huisman.  The Netherlands , 1996, The Lancet.

[52]  Heiner Stuckenschmidt,et al.  Ontology-Based Integration of Information - A Survey of Existing Approaches , 2001, OIS@IJCAI.

[53]  David A. Flynn.  Seeking peer assistance: Use of e-mail to consult weak and latent ties , 2005 .

[54]  Silvana Castano,et al.  Semantic integration of semistructured and structured data sources , 1999, SGMD.

[55]  R. Schiffer,et al.  INTRODUCTION , 1988, Neurology.

[56]  Laura N. Gitlin,et al.  A MODEL TO BUILD COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH OR EDUCATIONAL TEAMS OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS IN GERONTOLOGY , 1994 .

[57]  Joshua Fogel,et al.  Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns , 2009, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[58]  Charles P. Friedman,et al.  Evaluation Methods in Medical Informatics , 1997, Computers and Medicine.

[59]  Kate Ehrlich,et al.  Searching for experts in the enterprise: combining text and social network analysis , 2007, GROUP.

[60]  Dimitrina S. Dimitrova,et al.  Scientific Collaboration on the Internet , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[61]  Alessandro Acquisti,et al.  Information revelation and privacy in online social networks , 2005, WPES '05.

[62]  Darren Leigh,et al.  Social net: using patterns of physical proximity over time to infer shared interests , 2002, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[63]  Terri R. Kurtzberg,et al.  Long and Short Routes to Success in Electronically Mediated Negotiations: Group Affiliations and Good Vibrations. , 1999, Organizational behavior and human decision processes.

[64]  Charles P. Friedman,et al.  Evaluation Methods in Biomedical Informatics (Health Informatics) , 2005 .

[65]  Chunhua Weng,et al.  Understanding Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Collaborations: A Campus-Wide Survey of Obesity Experts , 2008, AMIA.

[66]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  Expertise recommender: a flexible recommendation system and architecture , 2000, CSCW '00.

[67]  John P. Walsh,et al.  Collaboration Structure, Communication Media, and Problems in Scientific Work Teams , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[68]  Ryutaro Ichise,et al.  Finding Experts by Link Prediction in Co-authorship Networks , 2007, FEWS.

[69]  Jun Zheng,et al.  Trust without touch: jumpstarting long-distance trust with initial social activities , 2002, CHI.

[70]  Marieke Guy,et al.  Folksonomies: Tidying Up Tags? , 2006, D Lib Mag..

[71]  Katy Börner,et al.  A Multi-Level Systems Perspective for the Science of Team Science , 2010, Science Translational Medicine.

[72]  Kristian J. Hammond,et al.  Clustering for opportunistic communication , 2002, WWW '02.

[73]  Munindar P. Singh,et al.  Searching social networks , 2003, AAMAS '03.

[74]  Jonathon N. Cummings,et al.  Coordination costs and project outcomes in multi-university collaborations , 2007 .

[75]  Mark S. Ackerman,et al.  Searching for expertise in social networks: a simulation of potential strategies , 2005, GROUP.

[76]  Howard L. Bleich,et al.  Technical Milestone: Medical Subject Headings Used to Search the Biomedical Literature , 2001, J. Am. Medical Informatics Assoc..

[77]  A Gafni,et al.  Developing a model of collaborative research: the complexities and challenges of implementation. , 2000, International journal of nursing studies.

[78]  T. R. Madanmohan,et al.  Roles and Knowledge Management in Online Technology Communities: An Ethnography Study , 2002, Int. J. Web Based Communities.

[79]  E. Zerhouni,et al.  Medicine. The NIH Roadmap. , 2003, Science.

[80]  Charles P. Friedman,et al.  Use of a MeSH-based index of faculty research interests to identify faculty publications: an IAIMSian study of precision, recall, and data reusability , 2002, AMIA.

[81]  Brian S. Butler,et al.  Requirements for expertise location systems in biomedical science and the Semantic Web , 2008 .

[82]  Danielle H. Lee,et al.  A comparison of meSH terms and CiteULike social tags as metadata for the same items , 2010, IHI.

[83]  Lada A. Adamic,et al.  How to search a social network , 2005, Soc. Networks.

[84]  B. R. Schlenker,et al.  Audiences' reactions to self-enhancing, self-denigrating, and accurate self-presentations , 1982 .

[85]  David W. McDonald,et al.  Recommending collaboration with social networks: a comparative evaluation , 2003, CHI '03.

[86]  Michael J. Muller,et al.  Understanding the benefit and costs of communities of practice , 2002, CACM.

[87]  David Margaret Eric David Cristian Mihai Woolwine,et al.  Folksonomies, Social Tagging and Scholarly Articles / Les folksonomies, l'étiquetage social et les articles scientifiques , 2011 .

[88]  J. S. Katz,et al.  What is research collaboration , 1997 .

[89]  Alexander Dekhtyar,et al.  Information Retrieval , 2018, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[90]  M. Lobo,et al.  When Competence Is Irrelevant: The Role of Interpersonal Affect in Task-Related Ties , 2008 .

[91]  Danielle H. Lee,et al.  Social tagging is no substitute for controlled indexing: A comparison of Medical Subject Headings and CiteULike tags assigned to 231, 388 papers , 2012, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[92]  Donald de B. Beaver,et al.  Reflections on Scientific Collaboration (and its study): Past, Present, and Future , 2001, Scientometrics.

[93]  G. Laudel.  What do we measure by co-authorships? , 2002 .

[94]  Susan T. Dumais,et al.  Evaluation Challenges and Directions for Information-Seeking Support Systems , 2009, Computer.

[95]  Wolfgang G. Stock,et al.  Folksonomy and information retrieval , 2008, ASIST.

[96]  Audris Mockus,et al.  Expertise Browser: a quantitative approach to identifying expertise , 2002, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering. ICSE 2002.

[97]  Ping Liu,et al.  Use of RDF for expertise matching within academia , 2005, Knowledge and Information Systems.

[98]  J. Mitchell-Wong,et al.  OpenSocial: From Social Networks to Social Ecosystem , 2007, 2007 Inaugural IEEE-IES Digital EcoSystems and Technologies Conference.

[99]  E. Larson,et al.  Minimizing disincentives for collaborative research. , 2003, Nursing outlook.

[100]  Christopher M. Johnson.  A survey of current research on online communities of practice , 2001, Internet High. Educ..

[101]  Loren Terveen,et al.  PHOAKS: a system for sharing recommendations , 1997, CACM.

[102]  Brian S. Butler,et al.  Good Partners are Hard to Find: The Search for and Selection of Collaborators in the Health Sciences , 2008, 2008 IEEE Fourth International Conference on eScience.

[103]  Mark T. Maybury,et al.  Enterprise expert and knowledge discovery , 1999, HCI.

[104]  Heiko Spallek,et al.  Facebook for Scientists: Requirements and Services for Optimizing How Scientific Collaborations Are Established , 2008, Journal of medical Internet research.

[105]  Carol Collier Kuhlthau.  Inside the Search Process: Information Seeking from the User's Perspective. , 1991 .

[106]  Dean F. Sittig,et al.  A Scientific Collaboration Tool Built on the Facebook Platform , 2008, AMIA.

[107]  Kate Ehrlich.  Locating Expertise: Design Issues for an expertise locator system , 2002 .

[108]  Leonard N. Foner.  A Multi-Agent Referral System for Matchmaking , 1996 .

[109]  David S. Rosenblum,et al.  What Anyone Can Know: The Privacy Risks of Social Networking Sites , 2007, IEEE Security & Privacy.

[110]  Lynn A. Streeter,et al.  Who Knows: A System Based on Automatic Representation of Semantic Structure , 1988, RIAO Conference.

[111]  Tom Wilson,et al.  Models in Information Behavior Research , 1999 .

[112]  Michal Jacovi,et al.  Why do we ReachOut?: functions of a semi-persistent peer support tool , 2003, GROUP.

[113]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Scientific Teams and Institution Collaborations: Evidence from U.S. Universities, 1981-1999 , 2004 .

[114]  Victoria Bellotti,et al.  What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: Privacy in Collaborative Computing , 1996, BCS HCI.

[115]  Charles P. Friedman,et al.  Development of a MeSH-based index of faculty research interests , 2000, AMIA.

[116]  Jeremy P. Birnholtz,et al.  When do researchers collaborate? Toward a model of collaboration propensity , 2007, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[117]  T. Erickson,et al.  Knowledge Communities: Online Environments for Supporting Knowledge Management and its Social Contex , 2001 .

[118]  Tibor Braun,et al.  A quantitative view on the coming of age of interdisciplinarity in the sciences 1980-1999 , 2003, Scientometrics.

[119]  Vassilios Peristeras,et al.  Interlinking the Social Web with Semantics , 2008, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[120]  Réjean Landry,et al.  “The Triple-Helix collaboration: Why do researchers collaborate with industry and the government? What are the factors that influence the perceived barriers?” , 2007, Scientometrics.

[121]  Barry Crabtree,et al.  PAAM 96 : proceedings of the First International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology : 22nd-24th April 1996, Westminster Central Hall, London, UK , 1996 .

[122]  Ismailcem Budak Arpinar,et al.  Collecting Expertise of Researchers for Finding Relevant Experts in a Peer-Review Setting , 2007 .

[123]  W. Hamilton,et al.  The evolution of cooperation. , 1984, Science.

[124]  Gianluca Demartini.  Finding Experts Using Wikipedia , 2007, FEWS.