article

Synergizing in Cyberinfrastructure Development

Authors:

Matthew J. Bietz,

Eric P. Baumer,

Charlotte P. LeeAuthors Info & Claims

Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Volume 19, Issue 3-4

Pages 245 - 281

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-010-9114-y

Published: 01 August 2010 Publication History

Abstract

This paper investigates the work of creating infrastructure, using as a case study the development of cyberinfrastructure for metagenomics research. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the role of embeddedness in infrastructure development. We expand on the notion of human infrastructure to develop the concepts of synergizing, leveraging, and aligning, which denote the active processes of creating and managing relationships among people, organizations, and technologies in the creation of cyberinfrastructure. This conceptual lens highlights how embeddedness is not only an important result of infrastructure development, but is also a precursor that can act as both a constraint and a resource for development activities.

References

[1]

Atkins, D. E., Droegemeier, K. K., Feldman, S. I., Garcia-Molina, H., Klein, M. L., Messerschmitt, D. G., et al. (2003). Revolutionizing science and engineering through cyberinfrastructure: Report of the National Science Foundation blue-ribbon advisory panel on cyberinfrastructure. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.

[2]

Berman, F. (2001). The human side of cyberinfrastructure. EnVision, 17(2), 1.

[3]

Bietz, M. J., & Lee, C. P. (2009). Collaboration in metagenomics: Sequence databases and the organization of scientific work. In E. Balka, L. Ciolfi, C. Simone, H. Tellioglu, & I. Wagner (Eds.), ECSCW 2009: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 7-11 September 2009, Vienna, Austria (pp. 243-262). London: Springer-Verlag.

[4]

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

[5]

Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? (pp. 196-223). London: Routledge.

[6]

Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

[7]

Davidson, C. N., & Goldberg, D. T. (2004). A manifesto for the humanities in a technological age. The Chronicle Review, 50(23), B7.

[8]

Edwards, P. N., Jackson, S. J., Bowker, G. C., & Knobel, C. P. (2007). Understanding infrastructure: Dynamics, tensions, and design. Ann Arbor, MI: Deep Blue.

[9]

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

[10]

Field, D., Garrity, G., Gray, T., Morrison, N., Selengut, J., Sterk, P., et al. (2008). The minimum information about a genome sequence (MIGS) specification. Nature Biotechnology, 26(5), 541- 547.

[11]

Finholt, T. A. (2002). Collaboratories. In B. Cronin (Ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (Vol. 36, pp. 73-107). Medford, NJ: Information Today Publishers.

[12]

Gad, C., & Bruun Jensen, C. (2010). On the Consequences of Post-ANT. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35(1), 55-80.

[13]

Galison, P. (1997). Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[14]

Garrity, G., Field, D., & Kyrpides, N. (2009). Standards in Genomic Sciences. Standards in Genomic Sciences, 1(1), 1-2.

[15]

Gerson, E. M. (2008). Reach, bracket, and the limits of rationalized coordination: Some challenges for CSCW. In M. S. Ackerman, C. A. Halverson, T. Erickson, & W. A. Kellogg (Eds.), Resources, Co-Evolution and Artifacts: Theory in CSCW (pp. 193-220). London: Springer.

[16]

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.

[17]

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

[18]

Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. The American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481-510.

[19]

Hey, T., & Trefethen, A. (2003). e-Science and its implications. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 361 (1809), 1809-1825.

[20]

Hey, T., & Trefethen, A. E. (2005). Cyberinfrastructure for e-Science. Science, 308(5723), 817- 821.

[21]

Jones, G. R., & George, J. M. (1998). The experience and evolution of trust: Implications for cooperation and teamwork. Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 531-546.

[22]

Karasti, H., & Baker, K. S. (2004). Infrastructuring for the long-term: Ecological information management. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 1 (Vol. 1, pp. 10020c). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society.

[23]

Katz, M. L., & Shapiro, C. (1985). Network Externalities, Competition, and Compatibility. The American Economic Review, 75(3), 424-440.

[24]

Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[25]

Latour, B. (1993). Ethnography of a "high-tech" case: About Aramis. In P. Lemonnier (Ed.), Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Culture Since the Neolithic (pp. 372-398). London: Routledge.

[26]

Lee, C. P., Dourish, P., & Mark, G. (2006). The human infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 483-492). New York: ACM.

[27]

Marshall, E. (2001). Bermuda Rules: Community Spirit, With Teeth. Science, 291(5507), 1192.

[28]

Nardi, B. A., Whittaker, S., & Schwarz, H. (2002). NetWORKers and their activity in intensional networks. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 11(1-2), 205-242.

[29]

National Center for Biotechnology Information (2008). GenBank Overview. http://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/Genbank/index.html. Accessed 23 February 2009.

[30]

National Center for Biotechnology Information (n.d.). FASTA Format Description. http://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/fasta.shtml. Accessed 14 April 2009.

[31]

National Research Council (U.S.) Committee on Metagenomics: Challenges and Functional Applications. (2007). New science of metagenomics: Revealing the secrets of our microbial planet. Washington, D. C.: National Academies Press.

[32]

Olson, G. M., Zimmerman, A., & Bos, N. (Eds.). (2008). Scientific Collaboration on the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[33]

The Oxford English Dictionary. (1989) (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

[34]

Palmer, C. L. (2001). Work at the Boundaries of Science: Information and the Interdisciplinary Research Process. Boston: Kluwer.

[35]

Pinch, T. J., & Bijker, W. E. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14(3), 399-441.

[36]

Pipek, V., & Wulf, V. (2009). Infrastructuring: Toward an integrated perspective on the design and use of information technology. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 10(5), 447-473.

[37]

Poon, S. S., Thomas, R. C., Aragon, C. R., & Lee, B. (2008). Context-linked virtual assistants for distributed teams: An astrophysics case study. In Proceedings of the ACM 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 361-370). New York, NY: ACM.

[38]

Ribes, D., & Finholt, T. A. (2007). Tensions across the scales: Planning infrastructure for the long-term. In Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (pp. 229-238). New York: ACM.

[39]

Schmidt, K., & Simone, C. (1996). Coordination mechanisms: Towards a conceptual foundation of CSCW systems design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 5(2), 155-200.

Digital Library

[40]

Seshadri, R., Kravitz, S. A., Smarr, L., Gilna, P., & Frazier, M. (2007). CAMERA: A community resource for metagenomics. PLoS Biology, 5(3), e75.

[41]

Sides, S. (2007). What is CAMERA? http://camera.calit2.net/about-camera/what-is-camera. Accessed 7 March 2010.

[42]

Smarr, L. L., Chien, A. A., DeFanti, T., Leigh, J., & Papadopoulos, P. M. (2003). The OptIPuter. Communications of the ACM, 46(11), 58-67.

Digital Library

[43]

Sonnenwald, D. H. (2007). Scientific collaboration: A synthesis of collaborations and strategies. In B. Cronin (Ed.), Annual Review of Information Science & Technology (Vol. 41, pp. 643-681). Medford, NJ: Information Today.

[44]

Spencer, B. F., Jr., Butler, R., Ricker, K., Marcusiu, D., Finholt, T. A., Foster, I., et al. (2008). NEESgrid: Lessions learned for future cyberinfrastructure development. In G. M. Olson, A. Zimmerman, & N. Bos (Eds.), Scientific Collaboration on the Internet (pp. 331-347). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[45]

Star, S. L. (1999). The ethnography of infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377- 391.

[46]

Star, S. L., & Bowker, G. C. (2002). How to infrastructure. In L. A. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone (Eds.), The Handbook of New Media (pp. 151-162). London: SAGE Publications.

[47]

Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research, 7(1), 111-134.

Digital Library

[48]

Strauss, A. (1988). The Articulation of Project Work: An Organizational Process. The Sociological Quarterly, 29(2), 163-178.

[49]

Traweek, S. (1988). Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[50]

Wulf, W. A. (1993). The collaboratory opportunity. Science, 261(5123), 854-855.

Cited By

Cohoon JDu CHowison J(2025)Tales of Transitions: Seeking Scientific Software SustainabilityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/37012089:1(1-25)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701208
Cho SLusthaus JFlechais I(2024)Unpacking the Dynamics of Harm in Game Cheating Communities: A Guiding Framework for Cross-Industry InterventionGames: Research and Practice10.1145/36565582:2(1-17)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656558
De A(2024)A Situated-Infrastructuring of WhatsApp for Business in IndiaExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651034(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3651034
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Sustaining the development of cyberinfrastructure: an organization adapting to change
CSCW '12: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

Cyberinfrastructures are virtual organizations comprised of people and large-scale scientific computational infrastructures. Cyberinfrastructures endeavor to support "cutting-edge" science and must continually evolve and be under development in order to ...
The human infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure
CSCW '06: Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work

Despite their rapid proliferation, there has been little examination of the coordination and social practices of cyberinfrastructure projects. We use the notion of "human infrastructure" to explore how human and organizational arrangements share ...
What is cyberinfrastructure
SIGUCCS '10: Proceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGUCCS fall conference: navigation and discovery

Cyberinfrastructure is a word commonly used but lacking a single, precise definition. One recognizes intuitively the analogy with infrastructure, and the use of cyber to refer to thinking or computing -- but what exactly is cyberinfrastructure as ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Computer Supported Cooperative Work

Computer Supported Cooperative Work Volume 19, Issue 3-4

August 2010

183 pages

ISSN:0925-9724

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © Copyright © 2010 Springer.

Publisher

Kluwer Academic Publishers

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 2010

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

41
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Cohoon JDu CHowison J(2025)Tales of Transitions: Seeking Scientific Software SustainabilityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/37012089:1(1-25)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701208
Cho SLusthaus JFlechais I(2024)Unpacking the Dynamics of Harm in Game Cheating Communities: A Guiding Framework for Cross-Industry InterventionGames: Research and Practice10.1145/36565582:2(1-17)Online publication date: 8-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656558
De A(2024)A Situated-Infrastructuring of WhatsApp for Business in IndiaExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651034(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3651034
Sutherland WPaine DLee C(2024)‘The Cloud is Not Not IT’: Ecological Change in Research Computing in the CloudComputer Supported Cooperative Work10.1007/s10606-024-09490-133:4(1037-1069)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10606-024-09490-1
Cohoon JKabir KMotahar TWiese J(2023)Cultivating Altruism Around Computing Resources: Anticipation Work in a Scholarly CommunityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101857:CSCW2(1-22)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610185
Pasquetto IOlivieri ATacchetti LRiotta GSpada A(2022)Disinformation as Infrastructure: Making and Maintaining the QAnon Conspiracy on Italian Digital MediaProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35129316:CSCW1(1-31)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3512931
Du CCohoon JPriem JPiwowar HMeyer CHowison J(2021)CiteAs: Better Software through Sociotechnical Change for Better Software CitationCompanion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3462204.3482889(218-221)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3462204.3482889
Geiger RHoward DIrani L(2021)The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software ProjectsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34492495:CSCW1(1-28)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449249
Klug DBogart CHerbsleb J(2021)"They Can Only Ever Guide"Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34492325:CSCW1(1-28)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449232
Neang ASutherland WBeach MLee C(2021)Data Integration as CoordinationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34329554:CSCW3(1-25)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3432955
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents