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National Collaboratories: Applying Information Technology for Scientific Research
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The fusion of computers and electronic communications has the potential to dramatically enhance the output and productivity of U.S. researchers. A major step toward realizing that potential can come from combining the interests of the scientific community at large with those of the computer science and engineering community to create integrated, tool-oriented computing and communications systems to support scientific collaboration. Such systems can be called ''collaboratories." Collaboration among colleagues is a challenge for the scientific community that takes many forms, most notably the sharing of data and/or special instruments, joint authoring of papers, and cooperative research. More and more scientific problems demand collaboration for their resolution as a consequence of increasing complexity and scale, a growing amount of which reflects the proliferation of fundamentally interdisciplinary problems. The study of global change phenomena illustrates all of these dimensions; it requires the expertise of oceanographers, meteorologists, biologists, chemists, physicists, experts in modeling and simulation, and others from around the world. In many areas scientists have sought computer-based tools and techniques for data gathering, storage, analysis, modeling, and communication, making use of both generic (including off-the-shelf) technology and the tools they have developed to meet their own, specific needs. These bottom-up efforts have been productive, but their implementation has been difficult: funding for tool development has been inadequate, tools have been deemed awkward to use, and the building of tools is regarded by most scientists as less prestigious than the direct conduct of research.
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS - Organizational Body
0-309-58532-5
NONE
Computer Science
English
1993
1-118
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