VOSS: Collaborative Research: Towards Collaboration Strength in Virtual Research Organizations

技术的发展使得来自不同机构的研究人员组成虚拟研究组织成为可能。虚拟研究组织有望通过将专业知识引入原本无法获得的项目来提高创新的速度和科学家的创造力。该项目有助于科学研究这种组织科学工作的新方式，并在协作和合作者的层面上检查虚拟研究组织中的协作问题。这项研究的目的是为了更好地理解分散的、跨学科的项目是如何成功的，并探索虚拟组织如何最好地使用新的工具和基础设施。这项研究建立在调查人员的基础上？了解信息技术研究（ITR）计划的前期工作，该计划包括由NSF支持的近500个跨学科技术研究项目。拟议的工作包括对ITR最后报告进行档案分析，以辨别ITR项目的长期影响，并对ITR调查员进行纵向后续调查。本研究将有助于组织科学和社会网络理论的发展，有助于更好地理解科学和技术。研究结果将对对组织感兴趣的社会科学家、对工具和基础设施感兴趣的计算机科学家和技术专家以及投资于研究的决策和政策制定者非常有用。科学和工程领域的虚拟研究机构对国家至关重要？美国的未来和解决全球问题。这项研究将有助于政策理解分布式跨学科合作的需求，改进评估研究项目直接和间接成果的指标和方法，为创新科学研究和教育的未来项目提供政策建议，并为组织，特别是部门和大学，提供有关最能支持分布式跨学科研究的制度政策和实践的信息。

Technology has made possible virtual research organizations involving researchers from different institutions. Virtual research organizations are expected to improve the speed of innovations and the creativity of scientists by bringing expertise to projects that would otherwise be unavailable. This project contributes to the scientific study of this new way of organizing scientific work and examines the problem of collaborating in virtual research organizations at the level of the collaboration and collaborators. The purpose of the research is to better understand how dispersed, interdisciplinary projects succeed, and to explore how virtual organizations might best use new tools and infrastructure.This research builds on the investigators? prior work in understanding the Information Technology Research (ITR) initiative, which included close to 500 interdisciplinary technology research projects supported by the NSF. The proposed work entails an archival analysis of ITR final reports to discern the longer-term impact of the ITR projects and a longitudinal follow-up survey of ITR investigators. This research will contribute to organization science and social network theory, and to a better understanding of science and technology. The results will be useful for social scientists interested in organizations, computer scientists and technologists interested in tools and infrastructure that work, and decision and policy makers who invest in research.Virtual research organizations in science and engineering are essential to the nation?s future and to solving global problems. This research will aid policy understanding of requirements of distributed interdisciplinary collaboration, improve metrics and approaches for evaluating the direct and indirect outcomes of research programs, suggest policies for future programs in innovative scientific research and education, and provide information to organizations, particularly departments and universities, about the institutional policies and practices that best support distributed interdisciplinary research.