A bit more to it: scholarly communication forums as socio-technical interaction networks

  • Authors:

  • Rob Kling;Geoffrey McKim;Adam King

  • Affiliations:

  • Center for Social Informatics, SLIS, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN;Center for Social Informatics, SLIS, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN;Center for Social Informatics, SLIS, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

In this article, we examine the conceptual models that help us understand the development and sustainability of scholarly and professional communication forums on the Internet, such as conferences, pre-print servers, field-wide data sets, and collaboratories. We first present and document the information processing model that is implicitly advanced in most discussions about scholarly communications-the "Standard Model." Then we present an alternative model, one that considers information technologies as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs). STIN models provide a richer understanding of human behavior with online scholarly communications forums. They also help to further a more complete understanding of the conditions and activities that support the sustainability of these forums within a field than does the Standard Model. We illustrate the significance of STIN models with examples of scholarly communication forums drawn from the fields of high-energy physics, molecular biology, and information systems. The article also includes a method for modeling electronic forums as STINs.