VOSS: HRCT Scanning as Glue: Sociotechnical Analysis and Support of a Loosely-Coupled Virtual Organization of Emergent Distributed Projects

随着获取和共享科学信息和解决问题的选择的扩展，越来越需要理解和支持分布式科学协作的社会技术需求。当相当多的注意力集中在分布式科学和工程的技术基础设施上时，很少有人知道这些实体是如何作为虚拟组织运作的。他们如何制定和追求共同的目标，获取和管理资源，计划和执行任务，等等。本项目将在科学社区中常见的混合两层结构的背景下研究这些问题：一个持久的松散耦合的虚拟组织，它本身由紧急分布式项目组成。焦点案例主题是围绕一件罕见的科学设备出现的虚拟组织，这是一台高分辨率计算机断层扫描（HRCT）扫描仪，世界上有三种这样的扫描仪之一。扫描仪属于定量成像中心（CQI），这是一个与宾夕法尼亚州立大学有关的研究中心。该系统用于生成人类和动物主体的身体结构的三维内部地图。这些高质量图像的可用性促进了体质人类学科学界的许多跨机构和国际研究合作。HRCT虚拟组织（以下简称HRCT- vo）非常复杂，因为它具有不断变化形状的两层结构。在一个层中，它为管理扫描任务和结果数据提供了持久的支持；另一方面，它支持在时间、人员和资源上重叠的紧急项目。HRCT- vo的研究以这些研究问题为指导：(1)为了协调HRCT扫描仪及其数据集的访问、交互、维护和传播，出现了哪些社会技术实践？(2)这些实践如何随着不同的分布式项目需求和特征（例如，规模、项目年龄、研究目标和方法）而变化？(3)如何透过资讯及通讯科技，更好地支援或加强这些做法？(4)社会技术系统如何发展以应对新的ICT支持？该项目将产生对虚拟组织的依赖关系和协调实践的丰富定性描述，这些组织利用了不同和重叠的分布式项目之间的共享资源，包括这些实践如何在定制技术支持的存在下发展。直接影响将是改善体质人类学中获取和管理科学资源的做法，并更广泛地影响到其他领域中具有类似双层结构的虚拟组织。最后，该项目将培养本科生在研究领域分析和解决现实世界社会技术问题的方法。

As the options for obtaining and sharing scientific information and problem-solving expand, there is an increasing need to understand and support the sociotechnical requirements of distributed scientific collaboration. While considerable attention has been directed at technical infrastructures for distributed science and engineering, little is known about how these entities function as virtual organizations ? how they formulate and pursue shared goals, acquire and manage resources, plan and implement tasks, and so on. This project will examine these issues in the context of a hybrid two-layer structure common in scientific communities: a persistent loosely-coupled virtual organization that itself consists of emergent distributed projects. The focal case subject is the virtual organization that has emerged around a rare piece of scientific equipment, a High Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) scanner, one of three such scanners worldwide. The scanner belongs to the Center for Quantitatitve Imaging (CQI), a research center associated with Penn State?s Department of Anthropology, which is used to generate three-dimensional internal maps of physical structures for human and animal subjects. The availability of these high-quality images has promoted many cross-institution and international research collaborations within the scientific community of physical anthropology. The HRCT virtual organization (henceforth HRCT-VO) is complex because it has a two-layer structure that is constantly changing shape. In one layer it provides persistent support for managing the scanning tasks and resulting data; in the other, it supports emergent projects that overlap in timeline, personnel, and resources. This study of the HRCT-VO is guided by these research questions: (1) What sociotechnical practices have emerged for coordinating access to, interaction with, maintenance of, and dissemination from the HRCT scanner and its datasets? (2) How do these practices vary as a function of different distributed project needs and characteristics (e.g., size, project age, research goals and methods)? (3) How can these practices be better supported or enhanced through information and communication technology (ICT)? (4) How does the sociotechnical system evolve in response to new ICT support? The project will yield a rich qualitative account of the dependencies and coordination practices of virtual organizations that leverage a shared resource among diverse and overlapping distributed projects, including how these practices evolve in the presence of customized technology support. A direct impact will be improved practices for accessing and managing scientific resources in physical anthropology and more broadly to virtual organizations with similar two-layer structures in other domain areas. Finally the project will train undergraduate students in methods for analyzing and addressing real world socio-technical problems in the research domain.