eScience goes by many names, including cyberinfrastructure, but its basic meaning is the same: It is the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support scientific work. ICTs enable research progress by providing access to data, resources, and people. Science is changing and becoming more reliant on digital resources.
Many people are familiar with “big eScience”—these are large, well-funded projects with many researchers that are all working toward the same goal, such as the human genome project to map and identify human genes or the physicists who work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.
“Big eScience” researchers share data with each other, use the same tools, and are consistent in building repositories of their work. They get large, sometimes international grants to support their work.
Little eScience, on the other hand, involves perhaps only a couple researchers—a professor and a graduate assistant, and explore issues and new theories. The ICT issues for “Little eScience” researchers are different. These people generally are more protective of their data, and the tools and metadata they use vary from researcher to researcher.
Syracuse professors Steve Sawyer and Kevin Crowston and Ph.D. student Andrea Wiggins examined the differences between little and big eScience access to data, resources, and people, and suggested ways in which little eScience researchers could take steps to build their digital support systems.
For example, Wiggins suggested little eScientists create metadata standards, use analysis workflows, and build preprint repositories of their research. But she also said that there needs to be incentives and input of funding and human resources for these changes to occur.
Little eScience, on the other hand, involves perhaps only a couple researchers—a professor and a graduate assistant, and explore issues and new theories. The ICT issues for “Little eScience” researchers are different. These people generally are more protective of their data, and the tools and metadata they use vary from researcher to researcher.
Syracuse professors Steve Sawyer and Kevin Crowston and Ph.D. student Andrea Wiggins examined the differences between little and big eScience access to data, resources, and people, and suggested ways in which little eScience researchers could take steps to build their digital support systems.
For example, Wiggins suggested little eScientists create metadata standards, use analysis workflows, and build preprint repositories of their research. But she also said that there needs to be incentives and input of funding and human resources for these changes to occur.
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