Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
nonhuman artifacts. By this means, people can accumulate the
wisdom
of crowds
[201] and summarize them into best practices. For example,
users can identify trusted service providers or partners to share re-
sources by examining the interaction patterns among Web services,
users, and providers. myExperiment is such a social network encour-
aging the sharing of bioinformatics Web services and processes, and
eventually inspiring collaborative scientific exploration. We will look
into myExperiment in more detail later in this section.
Social networks and services computing are both hot topics in the
broad scope of Internet computing. Researchers and technologists have
started to put attention on combining the power of both. In this section,
we first survey the existing social network services for scientists, and
then review the research work in this area.
8.1.1 Social Network Services for Scientists
The success of Facebook and LinkedIn demonstrates that the power of
the Web can not only foster but also capitalize on a personal network.
SNSs, both for the general public and specifically for the scientific
community, are changing scientists' communication and experimental
practice, thanks to the enhanced interaction and collaboration capa-
bility brought by SNSs. This section surveys the existing SNSs that
are currently used by scientists. We classify them by using two
criteria:
level of generality
and
ability to execute
. In the level
of generality dimension, we distinguish an SNS for
general
and
specific
purposes; in the ability to execute dimension, we distinguish
informative
and
executable
SNSs. An SNS is executable if one can
run computation on it.
SNS of the General Purpose
Informative
. General-purpose SNSs such as Facebook and LinkedIn
have been harnessed by the scientific community to cultivate com-
munication and collaboration [202]. For example, major scientific
associations such as the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) have set up groups on both Facebook and LinkedIn.
In these major community groups and many smaller ones, members
can share research progress, search for jobs, and seek collaborations.
