CAREER: Governing Collaborative Science: Cyberinfrastructure, Scale, and Governance in the Networked Ecological Sciences

该职业奖是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。对先进计算基础设施（“网络基础设施”）的投资在美国科学预算中所占的比例很大，而且还在不断增长。支持这些投资的是一系列广泛的转型主张：新的计算资源和范式将实现数据驱动的发现和创新的新模式；数据储存和交换的新能力将使科学知识储备更加持久、开放和可获得；CI将扩展和改进各级教育的科学教学和培训；CI将导致科学领域分布式协作工作的新型高效模式，特别是以新型“虚拟组织”的形式；CI将提高科学-社会界面的有效性和开放性，更好地将研究人员与公民和公共决策者联系起来。这些变化映射并促进了从战后“大科学”向“网络科学”的持续过渡，在这种过渡中，规模、整合和治理等社会技术问题是核心，而这些问题通常被当前网络基础设施运动的计算支持者和建设者低估。这个NSF职业奖探讨了高度分布式网络科学的两个主要例子中的治理动态和紧张关系：长期的长期生态研究（LTER）网络，面向生产本地基础的，数十年的，跨学科的生态研究；新兴的国家生态观测站网络（NEON），目前正在建设中，其雄心勃勃的目标是实践可互操作的、计算密集型的和大陆尺度的生态学。利用科学技术研究（STS）内外的理论传统，以及多尺度人种志、历史和网络分析方法的新颖组合，该项目承诺在围绕科学中的网络协作和计算变化的STS思维方面取得重要且实际有益的进展。知识价值：该项目深化和扩展了长期存在的STS关注：a)跨多个实践地点的科学知识和资源的整合；B)科学工作的正式和非正式治理，包括“内部”（在特定工作场所内部和跨场所）和“外部”（见-à-vis资助者、决策者和各种配置的公众）；c)与引入新的计算和组织形式相关的科学实践的转变。它围绕科学合作的本质产生了新的和重要的发现，并提供了对信息基础设施与围绕科学实践和治理的动态和紧张关系之间相互作用的更全面的理解。最后，该项目带来了新的方法组合——特别是一套完整的比较民族志、历史和网络分析方法——提出了将STS调查应用于该领域典型案例研究之外的现象和规模的新策略。更广泛的影响：这项研究为设计和政策层面提供了建议，因此直接有助于NSF和其他科学资助机构为生态科学内外的科学开发更有效、更动态、更敏感的网络基础设施。由于关注网络科学的外部治理（包括网络参与和排斥问题），该项目有助于实现NSF扩大和更公平的公众参与科学的目标。该项目广泛的教育和推广部分——包括跨学科的小学、本科和研究生培训部分；公开讲座和科学讲座；多部分公共广播系列——将项目的影响扩展到更广泛的教育和公众受众，包括传统上在科学领域代表性不足的群体的成员。

This CAREER award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Investments in advanced computational infrastructure ("cyberinfrastructure" (CI)) represent a large and growing percentage of the U.S. science budget. Underwriting such investments are a number of broadly transformational claims: that new computational resources and paradigms will enable new modes of data-driven discovery and innovation; that new capacities for data storage and exchange will render scientific stocks of knowledge more durable, open and accessible; that CI will extend and improve science teaching and training at all educational levels; that CI will lead to new and efficient modes of distributed collaborative working in the sciences, notably in the form of novel "virtual organizations"; and that CI will improve the efficacy and openness of the science-society interface, better connecting researchers to citizens and public decision-makers.Such changes map and contribute to an ongoing transition from postwar "big science" towards "networked science" in which sociotechnical issues of scale, integration, and governance are central -- and routinely underappreciated by the computational backers and builders of the present cyberinfrastructure movement. This NSF CAREER award explores the dynamics and tensions of governance within two leading examples of highly distributed networked science: the long-standing Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, oriented to producing locally grounded, multi-decadal, and cross-disciplinary ecological research; and the emerging National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), presently under construction with the ambitious goal of practicing interoperable, computationally-intensive, and continental-scale ecology. Drawing on theoretical traditions within and beyond science and technology studies (STS) and a novel combination of multi-scale ethnographic, historical, and network-analytic methods, this project promises important and practically beneficial advances in STS thinking around networked collaboration and computational change in the sciences.Intellectual Merit: This project deepens and extends long-standing STS concerns with: a) the integration of scientific knowledge and resources across multiple sites of practice; b) the formal and informal governance of scientific work, both "internal" (within and across specific worksites and "external" (vis-à-vis funders, decision-makers, and variously configured publics); and c) shifts in the practice of science associated with the introduction of new computational and organizational forms. It produces new and significant findings around the nature of scientific collaboration, and provides fuller understanding of the interplay between information infrastructures and the dynamics and tensions surrounding the practice and governance of science. Finally, the project leads to new methodological combinations -- in particular an integrated suite of comparative ethnographic, historical, and network-analytic methods -- suggesting new strategies for applying STS investigations to phenomena and scales beyond the field's canonical case study.Broader Impact: This study leads to both design- and policy-level prescriptions, and so contribute directly to NSF and other science funder efforts to develop more effective, dynamic, and responsive cyberinfrastructure for the sciences, both within and beyond the ecological sciences. In its attention to the external governing of networked science (including issues of network participation and exclusion), the project contributes to NSF goals of broadened and more equitable public participation in science. The project's extensive educational and outreach components -- including cross-disciplinary primary, undergraduate, and graduate training components; public lectures and science café; and multi-part public radio series -- extends the project's impact to a wider educational and public audience, including members of groups traditionally underrepresented within the sciences.