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have changed the way through which people communicate but also
can promote collaboration in a scientific community.
What
. We then present a network analysis on myExperiment [199],
an online biological workflow repository. By examining the rela-
tionship between workflows and services, we reveal the current
usage pattern of services in scientific workflows, and how can this
knowledge be extracted to facilitate and promote their reuse.
How
. Based on a network-based model called ServiceMap, we
aim to provide a global positioning system (GPS)-like support to:
(1) help domain scientists better understand various usage patterns
of the existing services; and (2) provide a system-level support to
recommend possible service compositions.
The dataset and experiment used in this chapter are from myEx-
periment, but the principles and methods employed are equally
applicable to other service-based workflow systems.
8.1 SOCIAL COMPUTINGMEETS
SCIENTIFICWORKFLOW
Social computing is about using computational systems to support social
behavior. Its emergence can be seen as a joint force of technology and
social changes. Social network services (SNSs) [200], as a popular form
of social computing, has profoundly changed the way through which
people communicate and share interest. Online SNSs, such as Google+,
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, have all provided innovative and
pervasive means to connect people across various borders. These stories
make both business and scientific communities regard the social network
(SN) as a means to further improve their computing infrastructure.
Advances in social network techniques have gained momentum to
impact the major Internet-based computing paradigms, including the
widely adopted services computing. Currently, social networks con-
nects people or groups who expose similar interests or features. In
services computing, a social network can connect not only people and
organizations but also other entities such as software components,
Web-based services, data resources, and workflows. More importantly,
it can record, trace, and visualize the interactions among people and
