Information and Communication Technology Challenges to Scientific Professional Identity

Abstract

Increasingly, information and communication technology (ICT) uses are transforming professional activities and interactions in ways that challenge traditional assumptions about professional identity. In this article, we consider the ways in which the professional identities of research scientists in oceanography and marine biology are shaped by the use of ICTs. We draw empirical data from an ongoing study of scientific research collaborations that examines uses of basic communication technologies, as well as scientific technologies with embedded ICT components. Our analysis suggests that development and use of ICT-enabled scientific technologies are identity enhancing for many scientists, facilitating their development of unique areas of scientific knowledge. ICT-related changes in data collection, collaborative coordination, and scientific interaction also challenge traditional definitions of expertise and professional identity. An examination of these challenges directs attention to the project identities that form around ICT-enabled scientific technologies and the ways that those project identities are enacted through ICTs.

Keywords:

• collaboration
• identity
• information and communication technologies

This study has been supported by grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the Center for International Business and Entrepreneurship Research, and the Globalization Research Center of the University of Hawaii, Manoa. The seed of an idea for this study was planted during a dinner conversation with Rob Kling. We thank Paulo Maurin for his graduate research assistance, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹Researchers have come to define collaboration quite literally as “working with others.” It implicitly involves communication and entails an extended series of coordinations and supplemental individual activities, through which people labor together for some purpose. In modern scientific collaborations, such activities are more and more often ICT-mediated.

²See http://www.scienceofcollaboratories.org for discussions/protect about sophisticated collaboration infrastructures and results from studies of initial use.

³See Goffman (1959)) for a thorough description of the ways in which people present themselves fictitiously.

⁴In this article, we use the term “sociotechnical” to indicate that our perspective requires us consider the social and the technical aspects of ICT use as fundamentally inseparable. This perspective resonates strongly with the theoretical foundations of sociotechnical studies (STS) researchers, but our use of the term may reflect a looser interpretation than those researchers would allow.

⁵Future interviews will include research scientists in astronomy.

⁶This condition of geographical remoteness is sometimes referred to as the “island effect” in ICT studies. One reviewer urged us to address this issue when justifying our sample selection, and noted, “If you were in a large Midwestern university, you would have no such problems.” We believe that our study design balances this effect by including members of the larger collaborative networks in a traversal study (step 4), so that our population sample is not restricted to Hawaii researchers. More importantly, we believe that our choice of disciplines will show that the “island effect” is relative. In their early study of oceanographers' use of online resources, Hesse et al. (1993) found that “remote” oceanographers did in fact report more benefits from online use. In that field, however, it was the Midwestern university researchers who were “remote,” because they were located far away from any ocean.

⁷Oceanographic and marine biology technologies can converge when marine animals become platforms for oceanographic observations. Some animals travel to regions inaccessible to humans, ships, and satellites. Collecting oceanographic readings in animal tags, along with animal movement data, provides information about the animal's environment for marine biologists, while adding to oceanographers' knowledge about remote ocean regions (Fedak, 2004).

⁸New scientific fields may arise when technology developments make it possible to do new types of observations or analysis. For example, the field of infrared astronomy arose from the military's development of infrared technologies (UCAR, 2001, p. 5).

⁹The proposed system would itself utilize embedded ICTs, to process and store oceanographic readings in digital formats and to transmit data through underwater fiber-optic cables.

¹⁰Marine organisms are useful for investigating chemical and developmental processes at the cellular level; marine biologists doing this type of research provide basic scientific insights for clinical researchers investigating human health. Scientists also believe that ocean organisms might provide sources of therapeutic pharmaceuticals. In the United States, marine biologists doing this type of research may receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as the National Science Foundation (NSF).

¹¹Among the scientists we have studied, some have conducted research projects for the military or for commercial clients. In these cases, data are considered to be proprietary and are not published in research articles, nor made available through dissemination ICTs. We encountered a few scientists who primarily work in this mode; their identity as researchers is less public as a result. Similarly, researchers operating within commercial R&D firms have limited opportunities to build their reputation among peers based on sharing detailed findings of their scientific efforts.

¹²Our selection of interviewees reflects the high proportion of senior faculty at the University of Hawaii.

¹³This observation reflects our focus on the identity enhancing and challenging influences of ICT developments on whole disciplines. An alternative approach would be to examine how scientists' identity develops throughout their careers, in relation to technology developments. Such a life cycle approach might focus on differences between junior, mid-career, and senior scientists at a point in time, and over time—a possible future course for research.

¹⁴The prevalence of the laboratory as a collaborative structure among marine biologists may also reflect the local nature of phenomena studied. That is, marine life is largely specific to the regions in which it occurs. For marine biologists interested in ecological questions, organisms in their environment, or populations of specific organisms, geography is thus an important factor in research.

¹⁵See Castells (1997, pp. 6–12), “The Construction of Identity,” for a quick synopsis of this viewpoint.

¹⁶One of the project groups in our study was contractually forced to disassemble the core technology they had worked to create at the end of the project. Their “piece” now sits gathering dust in a storage shed. The rest of the device was divided among two other collaborators, and is presumably in a similarly nonfunctional state.