Supporting distributed scientific
communities: Making CiteSeer
collaborative
John M. Carroll, Umer Farooq, and Craig H. Ganoe
Center for Human Computer Interaction
School of Information Sciences and Technology
The Pennsylvania State University
cganoe@ist.psu.edu
Motivation
• Science as a social enterprise
• Examples
– Watson-Crick
– Marie-Pierre Curie
–…
• Trends in scientific collaboration
– Increasingly distributed
– Increasingly on the Internet
Objective
• Support distributed scientific communities
• Build CiteSeer into a collaboratory
CiteSeer
• Academic search engine for Computer and
Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
– http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu
– 700, 000 full-text papers and 10 million citations
– About a million hits per day
Collaboratories
• NSF/NRC push in the 1990s
• Centers for geographically distributed scientists
– Matter of resources access and logistics
• Facilitate greater opportunities for scientific
collaboration
The CiteSeer
Collaboratory
• Collaboration around intellectual resources
– Social networks
– Neighbour-based discussion forums
– Synchronous collaborative spaces
CiteSeer survey
• Opportunity sample over two weeks
• 301 responders
• Data collection
– Quantitative data: Likert scales
– Qualitative data: Follow-up questions
Survey design
• Professional interaction
– Face-to-face and remote collaboration
– Types of collaborative support
• CiteSeer use
– Nature of queries
• Background information
Overall results
• 42% graduate students
• 42% master’s degree, 32% PhD degree
• 79% at least with computer science background
• Mean use of CiteSeer: 3.7 years
• 45% downloaded more than 100 papers
• 40% use CiteSeer once or twice per week
Collaboration with
whom
Distribution of whom to collaborate with on a modified scale
(N=268)
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
5-7 (More than sometimes)
50%
4 (Sometimes)
1-3 (Less than sometimes)
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Who look Who read
for similar my papers
papers
Whose
papers I
read
Who cite
Whom I
my papers cite in my
papers
Who cite
similar
papers
Who are
recruiting
for jobs
Who want
jobs
cont
• “[I want to] collaborate with CiteSeer users who
are looking for similar papers as [I am] and who
cite similar papers as [I do]…the reason is I can
save more time to find a good paper worth
reading and can touch more ideas in my
research area by collaboration.”
• “[I] would definitely like to collaborate with people
whose papers I cite and who cite my papers.”
Collaborative
activities
Types of collaborative activities (N=281)
100%
90%
7 (Very often)
6
80%
5
70%
4 (Sometimes)
3
60%
2
50%
1 (Never)
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Strenghten Brainstorm
social
new ideas
connections
Plan joint
projects
Write joint
Make my
Get
Learn about
papers
work visible feedback on their work
my work
cont
• “I’d love to participate in forums or
discussions about my field, to see what is
going on, and what other people think.”
• “I think the online discussions and
brainstorming could be useful. For paper
writing and project planning, I’d imagine
that the team would be cohesive and we’d
just use email or a wiki to coordinate.”
Awareness
Agreement on difficulty in staying aware (N=277)
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
5-7 (Agree)
50%
4 (Neither disagree nor agree)
1-3 (Disagree)
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Recent papers
published in my
area
Who reads my
paper
New colleagues in
my area
Who cites my
papers
cont
• “Knowing who reads my papers would be neat,
as it could help smooth an introduction.”
• “I’d like to know who has started a new
discussion thread related to my area of interest,
because I want to be aware what is going on
outside my lab, and what other researchers are
thinking or focusing on.”
Conclusion
• CiteSeer users want social networks
– Based on multiple social matching criteria
• CiteSeer users want support for divergent
collaborative activities
– Because of privacy and security concerns for
convergent activities (e.g., writing a journal paper)
• CiteSeer users want awareness support
– Through notification systems (RSS)
Future work
http://bridgetools.sourceforge.net
Questions/comments?
cganoe@ist.psu.edu