Birgitta Olander
Scholarly communication, social media, and collaboration in ESS.
New communication technologies offer new options for scholarly communication. Scientists’ information practices change when new interactive tools, like social media, become available. So far there are no studies of the effects of social media on scholarly communication and the quality of research. The focus of my project is to investigate such effects in Big Science.
Vast resources are required and expectations on research output, qualitative and quantitative, are very high in Big Science. But researchers are social human beings who need a creative environment. Socio-cultural aspects like small research teams, meeting places, and an open cognitive climate strongly contribute to this. If ESS manages to provide the stimulating research context that makes research thrive and scientists win Nobel prizes it would doubtlessly help to legitimize the resources involved.
Facilitating face-to-face and digital communication in and between the research teams is only one aspect of a creative environment. Over two thousand researchers will visit the ESS/MAX IV site every year. Teamwork and collaboration on several levels will be their main modus operandi. Social media are useful tools for both individual and collective communication, also in research, and often used for collaborative authoring (very common in High Energy Physics) and conferencing. If social media facilitate researchers’ interaction and boost informal communication among the researchers at a site, it is an indication that social media use improves research, which is a central issue in this project
Last modified 1 Oct 2012