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

技术使来自不同机构的研究人员组成的虚拟研究组织成为可能。虚拟研究组织有望通过为项目带来专业知识来提高创新速度和科学家的创造力，否则这些专业知识将无法获得。该项目有助于对这种组织科学工作的新方式进行科学研究，并在合作和合作者的层面上研究虚拟研究组织中的合作问题。这项研究的目的是更好地了解分散的跨学科项目是如何成功的，并探索虚拟组织如何最好地使用新的工具和基础设施。在理解信息技术研究（ITR）倡议，其中包括近500个跨学科的技术研究项目由NSF支持的先前工作。拟议的工作包括对国际贸易研究报告的最后报告进行档案分析，以查明国际贸易研究报告项目的长期影响，并对国际贸易研究报告的调查人员进行纵向后续调查。这一研究将有助于组织科学和社会网络理论，以及更好地理解科学和技术。研究结果将有助于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者。的未来，解决全球性问题。这项研究将有助于政策的理解分布式跨学科合作的要求，改善指标和方法，用于评估研究计划的直接和间接成果，为未来的创新科学研究和教育计划提出政策建议，并为组织，特别是部门和大学，提供有关机构政策和实践的信息，最好地支持分布式跨学科研究。

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.