The Politics of Next Generation Research Democratizing Research-Centred Computational Networks

Abstract

Research on information technology has been focused primarily on the worlds of IT and management systems for business and government to the relative neglect of research on the digital and institutional infrastructures that underpin the research enterprise itself. When digital research is studied, the emphasis has been on the diffusion of technological innovations, rather than the social and political dynamics shaping the design and role of technologies in research. However, what researchers know, and with whom they collaborate, could be transformed through the strategic use of advances designed to support research, defined here as ‘research-centred computational networks’. This article presents a framework for conceptualizing the social and technological choices shaping the next generation of research in ways that could open – democratize – key aspects of the research process that move well beyond academic publication. The framework highlights the limited scope of innovation to date, and identifies a variety of factors that maintain and enhance institutional control over the research process, at the risk of losing the creative and productive bottom-up participation by networked researchers and citizen researchers among the public at large. Conceptualizing, prioritizing and advancing study of next generation research is one of the most significant but difficult challenges facing scholars of information technology.