Abstract
ABSTRACTNASA astrobiology researchers from diverse fields often have little sense of how their work relates to one another. Using document analysis and participatory design methods, this paper reports on a scientometric analysis project to distill essential elements of astrobiology documents to identify them across diverse domains. Twelve NASA astrobiology researchers and administrators were presented with scientometric visualizations in a live setting and (i) demonstrated engagement by actively proposing alternative terms they felt best represented their team's research, (ii) confirmed that the effects of 2007‐2008 cuts in research funding had been accurately reflected in the document corpus and (iii) identified persistent differential impacts on research output across astrobiology's diverse constituent disciplines. The results suggest that this participatory design method provided a critical boundary space where conversations between diverse researchers took place that would have been unlikely to occur otherwise and illustrates the kind of unique contribution information science researchers and professionals can make to interdisciplinary scientific collaborations.
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