Interoperability Strategies for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: A Comparative Study

本比较研究使用人种学、访谈和内容数据分析，对三个具有不同方法的科学项目进行社会和组织比较，以开发网络基础设施和实现数据互操作性。这三个项目是GEON (http://www.geongrid.org)，这是一个地球科学项目，使用国家分布式存储代理，通过开发共享本体来创建跨多个学科的数据共享；LTER (http://lternet.edu/)，一个长期生态项目，使用元数据标准将单一学科的数据联合起来；海洋信息学，这是一个海洋学团队建立社区并设计一个地方元数据标准，将关键数据收集与国家标准连接起来。知识需求：随着新的科学网络基础设施的出现，一个核心问题是如何在多个分布式组织和社会环境中共享数据。对于这一紧迫的问题，已经有了许多技术上的建议（尤其重要的是，因为今天的一些重大政治问题，如保护生物多样性和发展与环境的可持续关系，关键在于跨组织和学科背景的联合数据的能力）。然而，关于不同互操作性策略的组织和社会维度的研究很少，也没有比较研究。基于过去15年社会信息学领域的研究，本项目的工作假设是，创建一个公共共享数据基础设施需要复杂的谈判，涉及不同参与者的相对制度权重（机构有一系列订阅或不订阅互操作性策略的动机），其学科组织的性质(特别是奖励结构；对跨学科工作的开放性；大型数据集的使用历史)和它们领域工作的性质（对长期数据存储和重用的承诺程度；数据随时间的衰减率；需要利用大型联邦数据集）。本研究将深入了解生产共享科学网络基础设施的组织复杂性，以及三种互操作性方法（元数据标准、本体和社区驱动方法）的成本和收益。更广泛的影响：科学网络基础设施的发展对这个国家未来的经济繁荣以及对科学和技术层面的关键政策问题作出反应的能力至关重要。网络基础设施是一项大规模的当代投资；这项研究将有助于为今天决定未来结构性结果的决策提供信息。在科学政策层面，该项目将促进对建设共享基础设施的组织和社会层面的理解。这项研究将产生一份关于数据社区和科学网络基础设施的政策白皮书，并为正在进行的基础设施发展活动的形成性评估提出指导方针。随着这些新的交流工具的发展，有必要制定教育计划，使领域科学家、计算机科学家和科学政策工作者对社会和组织问题敏感。作为网络基础设施硕士课程的核心部分，该项目将制作一门关于其发展的研究生课程，以及一个用于教育合作伙伴关系的中学课程模块。一个“网络基础设施页面”网站，仿照“查询页面”（http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/），将纳入课程和模块，并允许该项目首先与合作伙伴社区分享结果，然后跨社区分享结果。这将为科学网络基础设施新兴领域的研究人员和实践者提供一个核心资源站点，以分享发现和最佳实践，并参与集体解决问题。该项目得到了2004财年美国国家科学基金会人类与社会动力学（HSD）竞赛的支持。HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理涉及所有NSF董事和办公室。

This comparative study uses ethnographic, interview, and content data analysis to provide a situated social and organizational comparison of three scientific projects with distinct approaches to developing cyberinfrastructures and achieving data interoperability. The three projects are GEON (http://www.geongrid.org), a geosciences project using a national distributed storage broker to create data sharing across multiple disciplines through developing shared ontologies; LTER (http://lternet.edu/), a long-term ecological program using metadata standards to federate data across a single discipline; and Ocean Informatics, an oceanographic team building community and designing a local metadata standard to bridge key data collections to a national standard. Intellectual Need: As new scientific cyberinfrastructures emerge, a central question is how to share data across multiple distributed organizational and social contexts. There have been many suggestions for technical fixes for this pressing concern (particularly important since some of today's great political questions, such as preserving biodiversity and developing a sustainable relationship with the environment pivot on the ability to federate data across organizational and disciplinary contexts). However, there has been little study - and no comparative study - of the organizational and social dimensions of differing interoperability strategies. The working hypothesis for this project, drawing on research in the field of social informatics over the past fifteen years, is that creation of a common shared data infrastructure entails complex negotiations involving the relative institutional weight of the different actors (institutions have a range of motives for subscribing or not to interoperability strategies), the nature of their disciplinary organization (in particular reward structures; openness to interdisciplinary work; history of use of large datasets) and the nature of their domain work (degree of commitment to long-term data storage and re-use; decay rate of data over time; need to draw on large federate datasets). This study will develop grounded understandings of the organizational complexity in producing shared scientific cyberinfrastructure and the costs and benefits of three interoperability approaches: metadata standards, ontologies, and community-driven approaches. Broader Impact: The development of scientific cyberinfrastructure is vital for this country's future economic prosperity and for its ability to respond to key policy issues with scientific and technical dimensions. Cyberinfrastructure is a large-scale contemporary investment; this study will help inform the decisions that today are determining future structural outcomes. At the level of science policy, the project will facilitate understandings of the organizational and social dimensions in building shared infrastructure. The research will produce a policy white paper on data communities and scientific cyberinfrastructure and suggest guidelines for the ongoing formative evaluation of infrastructure development activities. As these new communication tools develop, there is a need for educational programs to sensitize domain scientists, computer scientists and science policy workers to social and organizational issues. The project will produce, as a centerpiece to a Masters level program in cyberinfrastructure, a graduate course about its development, as well as a secondary school lesson module for use in an educational partnership. A 'Cyberinfrastructure Page' website, modeled on 'Inquiry Page' (http://inquiry.uiuc.edu/), will incorporate the course and module and allow this project to share results first with the partner communities and then across communities. This will provide the kernel of a resource site for researchers and practitioners in the emergent field of scientific cyberinfrastructure, to share findings and best practices and to engage in collective problem solving.This project is supported by an award from the FY 2004 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD). Coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards involves all NSF directorates and offices.