Infrastructure and vocation

Abstract

HCI studies of computational change in the sciences have made important design and analytic contributions, to other fields of science and to HCI itself. But some of the longerterm effects and complexities of infrastructural change in the sciences aren't easily captured under short-term, designor artifact-centered accounts. Drawing on extended ethnographic study of computational development in ecology, this paper explores the relationship between new computational infrastructure and the nature of ecology as a vocation: roughly, the deeply held sense of what it means to 'be' an ecologist, and to 'do' ecology. We analyze in particular the nature of the field and field work as a central site of ecological practice and identity; how new computational developments are remediating this crucial relation; and the emergent vocational values that new and more computationally-intensive forms of ecology may give rise to.

Open is not enough

“…Based on our primary RQ, calls for field-specific investigations [97], the characterized lack of meaningful incentives [160], and our own intermediate findings, we identified four secondary RQs. First, we investigate the role of technology in supporting reproducible practices (RQ1).…”

“…DesignSafe [58] is an example of a web-based repository that focuses on specific requirements for simulation datasets. While the tailored design approach requires extensive efforts for the implementation and maintenance, it enables a more targeted interaction with preserved research content [97]. The CAP service is a very good example of tailored infrastructure, as the tool is designed to map research workflows from the four major LHC experiments.…”

“…And how do requirements differ between these different research forms? Jackson and Barbrow [97] stressed the value of studying requirements in field-specific investigations, pointing out the "need to supplement or replace generic, tool-centered, and aspirational accounts of cyberinfrastructure development with approaches that start from the individual histories of practice and value in specific scientific fields. "…”

“…Instead, community-tailored services map research workflows of a target domain. This mapping enables more targeted preservation, discovery, and reuse through domain-tailored language [32,97]. However, the design, implementation, and maintenance of tailored tools is more difficult and expensive [40,169].…”

“…Overall, we need to further our understanding of researchers' requirements for supportive RDM tools and interconnections between preservation, sharing, tools, and knowledge lifecycles [99]. As Jackson and Barbrow pointed out, we "need to supplement or replace generic, tool-centered, and aspirational accounts of cyberinfrastructure development with approaches that start from the individual histories of practice and value in specific scientific fields" [97].…”