Observations of the lifecycles and information worlds of collaborative scientific teams at a national science lab

Abstract

Team-based scientific collaborations play a key role in the discovery and distribution of scientific knowledge. In order to determine the social and organizational factors that help support a scientific team's successful transition from short-term experiments to long-term programs of ongoing scientific research, this study used observations of teams conducting experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to determine what teams actually do during these experiments. As part of a larger, ongoing research project using mixed methods, our findings describe the scientific culture of hybrid teams at work, and demonstrate how multiple, overlapping, and nested lifecycles and information worlds play an important role in promoting successful and continuing scientific collaboration. The boundaries between worlds and efforts to span them are particularly important, requiring greater attention. Our future research will develop a model including these factors and add further practical and theoretical implications to those we have already identified.

Exploring the Information Worlds of Older Persons During Disasters

“…The theory of information worlds has been applied in settings such as healthcare, farming, and work teams (for example, Burnett et al, ; Känsäkoski & Huotari, ; Worrall et al, ), but not in the context of time‐critical and uncertain events where drawing on routine sources of information may not be possible. The information worlds of older persons in disasters may shrink and institutional sources of information may be constrained at different points, leaving individuals to fend for themselves and seek local sources of information.…”

Chaos, expansion, and contraction: The information worlds of depression patients during theCOVID‐19 pandemic lockdown

“…The theory of information worlds has been applied to scientific research teams, medical care, natural disasters, and other environments (e.g., Burnett et al, 2014;Känsäkoski & Huotari, 2016;Pang et al, 2020;Worrall et al, 2012). Although this theory has not yet been applied to health crisis situations, especially in thepandemic lockdown process, the individual, social, and signification domains involved in this theory fit well with the present study's focus on depressed individuals, the COVID-19 lockdown situation, and the signification and communication practices involved in the interaction of different information worlds.…”