Title:

Cyberscience: Research in the Age of the Internet

Review:

'Cyberscience' - as opposed to 'traditional' science - relates to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for scientific purposes. This book asserts that ICTs lead to qualitative changes in the content of research itself as well as the way research is conducted. This forms the central question of the author's investigation - namely, how, specifically, will technological developments change the ways research is done?

At the heart of the study are some 50 in-depth interviews with eminent scientists in a variety of disciplines exploring their use or exposure to ICTs. A questionnaire (comprising over 70 mostly open-ended questions) is included as an appendix. Another appendix lists over 900 URLs referenced in the main text of this volume, which at the same time form the basis of the author's Cyberlinks database <http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ita/cyberlinks.htm>, intended to form a constantly updated directory of sources and resources used by the author in his research.

This is a valuable adjunct to a book in which so many URL references are likely to be outdated almost as soon as they are published. Throughout his research the author investigates every conceivable use of ICTs in academic research, citing exemplars of, for example, conferencing, archiving, teaching, publishing, translating, collaborating and many more. He gives qualitative analyses of each situation based on the questionnaire survey and others' work.

Chapter 3 is an interesting comparison of the relative 'cyberness' of each of a large number of subdisciplines across the sciences, humanities and social sciences curriculum. How and why, for example, are ICTs less prevalent in literature studies than in applied linguistics, and where are the 'hotspots' of ICT use in each of these disciplines? Like any interdisciplinary study, this book will be of interest to a variety of readers. In addition to being possibly the most wide-ranging review of the current status of ICTs in research, information scientists will find many of the author's discoveries pertinent to research in social informatics.

The research methodology, which is so clearly explicated in this book, is worthy of investigation itself from an information science perspective. What I found most admirable are the author's broad conclusions, bringing together a wide range of earlier conclusions and attempting to provide a meta-level of remarks. There appears to be no single conclusion to make at this stage of research. ICTs do certainly aid collaboration and have created communities where none existed before. However, there are significant situations in which ICT use has been resisted, or at the very least where its use has supplemented other research environments rather than replacing them.

Free Pint Reviewer:

Jonathan Gordon-Till leaves actuaries Aon Consulting next week after 17 years as information manager. He is a Fellow of CILIP and an active member of many groups in the information profession. His professional interests include competitive intelligence, information society studies, information ethics, and private investigation. He is particularly interested in the strategic value of information and information risk. Jonathan is writing a book on competitive intelligence and another on sources and resources in UK pensions. In addition to English he speaks Hungarian and Russian.

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