HCC: Medium: Scientists and their Software: A Sociotechnical Investigation of Scientific Software Development and Sharing

HCC：媒介：科学家及其软件：科学软件开发和共享的社会技术调查

• 批准号: 1302272
• 负责人: Charlotte Lee
• 金额: $ 49.96万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-01 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1302272&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: HCC; Medium; Scientists; their; Software

Scientific research is increasingly reliant on advanced social and technical infrastructures called cyberinfrastructure (CI). In turn, the cornerstone of scientific cyberinfrastructure is Scientific Cyberinfrastructure Software (SCIS) that enables data collection from digital instruments, analysis of data through the execution of mathematical algorithms, data visualization and sharing of data through standardized file formats and widely accessible databases. Despite the importance of SCIS for data-intensive research, too little is known about how scientists actually use, adopt and develop scientific software. More research is needed to explore how software, software development and software sharing practices are, and can be, community products, resources or practices. This research project will examine how scientists develop SCIS as part of their day-to-day research practice through a qualitative, ethnographic study of 6 research groups using observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. The researchers will investigate how decisions about SCIS are made; document, classify and analyze actual practices for using, adopting, developing or sharing software; identify scientists' incentives and disincentives to share software at the local, organizational and community levels; and discern the impacts, intentional and unintentional, that SCIS systems have on scientific data and the scientific research process.Understanding SCIS development and sharing is necessary to ensure continued integrity of datasets shared within and among communities, facilitate the sharing of the tools and practices that are developed using national research funds and most importantly, support a fundamental tenet of scientific research: the open communication of the processes and practices behind published research findings. Furthermore, understanding these practices will support the education and training of our nation's future generations of scientists and engineers. This project will thus benefit domain scientists, SCIS developers, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Software Engineering (SE) scholars and policy makers by providing conceptual tools that will provide guidance when considering how and when software can be designed and supported to be accessible and useful to the broader research community.

科学研究越来越依赖于称为网络基础设施（CI）的先进社会和技术基础设施。反过来，科学网络基础设施的基石是科学网络基础设施软件（SCIS），它可以从数字仪器收集数据，通过执行数学算法分析数据，通过标准化文件格式和广泛访问的数据库进行数据可视化和共享。尽管SCIS对于数据密集型研究非常重要，但对于科学家实际上如何使用、采用和开发科学软件，我们知之甚少。需要更多的研究来探索软件、软件开发和软件共享实践如何成为、以及如何能够成为社区产品、资源或实践。该研究项目将通过对6个研究小组进行定性的人种学研究，使用观察，半结构化访谈和文件分析，研究科学家如何将SCIS作为日常研究实践的一部分。研究人员将调查有关SCIS的决策是如何做出的;记录、分类和分析使用、采用、开发或共享软件的实际做法;确定科学家在地方、组织和社区层面共享软件的激励和抑制因素;并辨别这些影响，有意的和无意的，了解SCIS的开发和共享对于确保SCIS内部和之间共享的数据集的持续完整性是必要的。这不仅有助于科学界交流经验，促进分享利用国家研究基金开发的工具和做法，而且最重要的是，支持科学研究的一项基本原则：公开交流已发表研究成果背后的过程和做法。此外，了解这些做法将支持我们国家未来几代科学家和工程师的教育和培训。因此，该项目将有利于领域科学家，SCIS开发人员，计算机支持的合作工作（CSCW）和软件工程（SE）的学者和政策制定者提供的概念工具，将提供指导时，考虑如何以及何时软件可以设计和支持，以方便和有用的更广泛的研究社区。