Technology Review reports:
"Virtual collaborations for sharing data and insights are increasingly key to scientific success. When they work, that is.
Paul M. Fitts Collegiate Professor of Human Computer Interaction at the U-M Gary Olson
If you're a researcher studying schizophrenia, you can tap marvelous new tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography. You can combine data from these devices for astonishingly powerful new views of how the brain works. What you can't do is easily integrate data gathered by researchers outside your group."
Enter the Biomedical Informatics Research Network, or BIRN. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, BIRN is a virtual collaboration project for biomedical big science.
It aims to let a given research community share its instrumentation, data, software tools, and other resources over very high speed networks. One of the first BIRN testbeds is for schizophrenia researchers, who will pool their images to create a national treasure trove.
BIRN is a prime example of a collaboratory: "an organizational entity that spans distance, supports rich and recurring human interaction oriented to a common research area, and provides access to data sources, artifacts and tools required to accomplish research tasks."
That's the definition of Gary Olson, professor of human-computer interactions at the University of Michigan and his colleagues in the Science of Collaboratories project, which is backed by the National Science Foundation.
Professor Olson's recipe for a successful collaboratory include:
1. Make sure your research community is ready: Is it accustomed to operating this way?
2. Tackle big questions
3. Get each individual participant on board
4. Gear up for major technical challenges
5. Put enough resources into project management
6. Talk the same talk (agree on a common terminology)
7. Hold your course (patience, vision and planning)
"Collaboration is hard in general, whether you're doing it online or not, and it needs the social glue of good relations among participants.
No matter how fancy your software, the best way to start building a personal relationship with your colleagues is face-to-face."
