Social Science Research Practice in the Digital Age

Changes, Illustrations, Challenges

World Class University (WCU) Project

YeungNam University, Republic of Korea
WCU Webometrics Institute
http://english-webometrics.yu.ac.kr

21 September 2009

Nicholas W. Jankowski
Visiting Fellow
Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS) for the Humanities & Social Sciences

nickjan@xs4all.nl
Introduction
WCU Project YeungNam University
• appreciation to Prof. Park & WCU staff
• introduction respondents

Procedures
• Panoramic overview (ca. 40 min)
• Respondents (4) (10-15 min each)
• Questions & discussion (20-30 min)

Personal background
• Academic milieus
• Research & scholarly publishing
• Recent publication
e-Research: Transformations in Scholarly Practice (Routledge, July 2009)
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 Overview
• Overall objective:
critically examining the claim to revolutionary change

• Palette of conceptual formulations

• Illustrating ‘new ways’ of scholarship

• ‘Challenges in the Digital Age’

• Broader questions

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 Claims to Revolutionary Change
• “Environmental science is undergoing a revolution.”
(Badcock, et al., 13 Oct. 2009)

• “eScience - The Revolution is Starting”

(Gray, 2005; Microsoft Research)

• Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through

Cyberinfrastructure (Atkins et al., 2003)

• “We are living in exciting times.” (Herring, 2004)

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Conceptual Formulations
(potpourri)

• cyberinfrastructure
• cyberscience
• e-Science
• e-Social Science
• e-Research
• Internet science (studies)
• e-Scholarship
• online research

See further: Schroeder (2007)

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Cyberinfrastructure
Indiana University (March 2007), http://rc.uits.iu.edu/newsletter/archives/

“Cyberinfrastructure consists of computing systems,

data storage systems, advanced instruments and data
repositories, visualization environments, and people,
all linked together by software and high performance
networks to improve research productivity and enable
breakthroughs not otherwise possible. “

Compared to ubiquitous infrastructures in society:

transport, electrical power, gas & water

Note: concept in flux; see Edwards et al. (2007)

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e-Science & Big Science

CERN http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/pics/stand2004/cern.html
Big: budgets, staffs, machines, laboratories

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 e-Science
• Definition
National e-Science Centre, http://www.nesc.ac.uk/nesc/define.html
“In the future, e-Science will refer to the large scale science that will increasingly be carried out
through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet. Typically, a feature of such
collaborative scientific enterprises is that they will require access to very large data collections,
very large scale computing resources and high performance visualisation back to the individual
user scientists.”

• Features
• sciences &engineering: primary; humanities & social sciences: secondary
• grid computing: key component
• alliance with computer science; tool development
• top-down mandate; incorporated into science policy
• documents: sense of inevitability, technological determinism

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e-Research
Rationale
• Broad disciplinary relevance; social sciences and humanities
• Unhindered by proclivities of other terms

Features
• Distant, international collaboration
• Data preservation & access
• Internet-based instruments
• Visualization
• (high-speed) networked computers

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Illustrations: capita selecta

• e-Science

• e-Research: social sciences

• e-Research: humanities
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e-Science:
large-scale instrumentation & distant collaboration

Birnholtz, J. P., & Horn, D. B. (2007). Shake, rattle and roles: Lessons from experimental
earthquake engineering for incorporating remote users in large-scale e-science experiments.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), article 17.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/birnholtz.html

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Social Sciences: Data Visualization 1
Classical data visualization
Source: Livingstone, S., & Helsper, E. (2007) Gradations in digital inclusion: children, young people and the
digital divide. New Media & Society 9(4): 671-696.

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Social Sciences: Data Visualization 2
IBM: ManyEyes Visualization Project
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/view/Sm4H4JsOtha6AL-ANrG8J2-
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/page/Tour.html

“Finding the right way view your data

is as much an art as a science.”

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Social Sciences: Data Visualization 3
Vizster: Visualizing Online Social Networks
Http://jheer.org/vizster/

Note: see Burns (2007) for description of IssueCrawler

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Humanities: Data Preservation & Access 1a
International Institute for Social History
manuscript Communist Manifesto
http://www.iisg.nl/collections/manifest/manifest.php

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 Humanities: Data Preservation & Access 1b
Musée Rodin http://www.musee-rodin.fr/

Note: see Hine (2006) for discussion of the ‘digital’ versus the ‘original’ in scholarly practice
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Humanities: Data Visualization 1
The Qumran Visualization Project http://www.nelc.ucla.edu/qumran/

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Humanities: Data Visualization 2
http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/

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Challenges for Social Science Research in
the Digital Age (abbreviated version)
• Collaboration
How can distant collaboration be achieved across scholarly ‘divides’ & cultural divisions?
(challenge of cross-national, cross-disciplinary research)

• Data preservation & access

How can quantitative & qualitative data be archived, preserved & made accessible to other researchers?

• Internet-based research designs

How can representative samples be studied using online instrumentation for data collection & analysis?

• Visualization
How can social scientists utilize the potential of high-speed networked computers in visualizing social &
political relations?

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Broader Discussion
• How are features & concerns of e-Research relevant to
‘ordinary’ scholars in the humanities & social science?

• RQ: In what manner & to what extent are features of e-

Research adopted / adapted (social sciences & humanities)
across disciplines, scholarly cultures & political climates?

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Selected Resources
(semi-ordered list)
 Jankowski, N. W. (ed.) (2009). e-Research: Transformation in scholarly practice. New York: Routledge.
 Badcock, N. S., Garnett, E. A. Godfray, H. C. J., & Gurney, R. J. (eds.). (2009). The environmental eScience revolution.
Theme issue. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 367 (1904), Oct. 13. Available at:
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/issues/eScience.xhtml
 ACLS. (Dec. 2006). Our Cultural Commonwealth. Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on
Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences. http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/
 Akins Report. (Jan. 2003). Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure. Report of the National
Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/reports/toc.jsp
 National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure Council (March 2007). Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century
Discovery. http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/nsf0728.pdf
 Edwards, P.N., Jackson, S.J., Bowker, G.C., & Knobel, C.P. Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and
Design. (Jan. 2007). Report of a Workshop on “History & Theory of Infrastructure: Lessons for New Scientific
Cyberinfrastructures”. http://www.si.umich.edu/InfrastructureWorkshop/documents/UnderstandingInfrastructure2007.pdf
 Jankowski, N. W. (Ed.) (2007). Theme issue on e-Science, JCMC, 12(2), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/
 Bruns, A. (May 2007). Methodologies for Mapping the Political Blogosphere: An Exploration Using the IssueCrawler
Research Tool. First Monday, 12(5). http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_5/bruns/index.html
 de la Flor, G., & Meyer, E. T. (2008). Talking ‘bout a revolution: Framing e-Research as a computerization movement.
Presentation at e-Research ‘08 Conference. Sept. available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/etmeyer/talking-bout-a-revolution-framing-eresearch-as-a-computerization-movement-presentation

 Schroeder, R. (March 2007). e-Research Infrastructures and Open Science: Towards a New System of Knowledge
Production? Prometheus, 25(1): 1-17. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/08109028.asp

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 Thank You!
Nicholas W. Jankowski
Visiting Fellow, VKS
nickjan@xs4all.nl

URLS: institutions & resources

• WCU Webometrics Institute: http://english-webometrics.yu.ac.kr/

• YeungNam WCU Project Blog: http://yeungnam.edublogs.org/
• e-Research book web site (beta): http://e-research.cyswik.net/
• Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS) for the Humanities & Social Sciences:
www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl
• VKS wiki e-Research: www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl/wiki/

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