Is Internet Use Associated With Reporting Fewer Problems in Collaboration?

Abstract

In the developing world, many advocate the benefits of collaboration as the primary driver of research productivity. One of the crucial conditions that support, and help overcome problems in, distributed work is consistent access and use of Internet technologies. But it is argued that the collaborative benefits of Internet technologies are not symmetrically distributed worldwide, perhaps a result of neo-dependency relationships between the South and the North. To evaluate this, in this article, the authors consider the association between “e-mail use and diversity,” “reported problems in web surfing,” and “problems in research collaboration” for a population of scientists outside the mainstream, in the South American nation of Chile. They surveyed 337 scientists over three regions asking them to report on their collaborative behavior, Internet use, and research challenges. While they find that Chileans on the whole report fewer problems compared with other less developed nations studied in this way, they do report problems when reporting more collaborators and when their professional network is geographically heterogeneous. E-mail use, though, has no association with less frequent reports of research challenges, while reporting that “the Internet has made them more connected” and reporting (more intensely) “problems encountered while surfing the web” are significantly associated with reporting more problems in research, when controlling for background, professional activities, institutional and field context, and the number and location of collaborators.