Abstract
[This book] offers a distinctive understanding of new infrastructures for knowledge production based in science and technology studies. This field offers a unique potential to assess systematically the prospects for new modes of science enabled by information and communication technologies. ... The first section of the book focuses on organized efforts to promote the development of new infrastructures, asking what motivates these efforts, what assumptions shape and constrain them and what structures they put in place. The impetus behind these examinations is to find modes of analysis that avoid falling into existing assumptions whilst maintaining a constructive dialogue. In the process, the chapters in this section highlight connections and limitations that might otherwise remain hidden between old and new technologies for science, and image alternative infrastructures that might serve the goals of different communities. ... The second section of the book, on communication, disciplinarity and collaborative practice, asks what it takes for scientists to use new infrastructures for knowledge production. The focus shifts to the scientists using mediated communication for their collaborations and data exchanges, exploring the new forms of expertise that it demands and the extent to which certain disciplinary practices predispose their practitioners to use technologies in particular ways. ... The third section of the book then moves to examination of the structures of science on a broader level, asking how new infrastructures might occasion wholesale change in the ways that science is communicated and in the inequalities between groups of scientists. The potential for change in the science system has, after all, been a feature of discussions about e-science and cyberinfrastructure, and it seems important to consider what sighs are discernible at this early stage. ... The authors use varied methodological approaches. which include: reviewing the origins of initiatives to develop e-science infrastructures, exploring the diversity of the various solutions and the scientific cultures which use them, and assessing the prospects for wholesale change in scientific structures and practices. [It] contains practical advice for the design of appropriate technological solutions, and long range assessments of the prospects for change, which are useful to policy makers and those implementing institutional infrastructures. (DIPF/Orig.).