An Overview of e-Research Collaboration

In this chapter, we examine the concept of collaborative research. We discuss the origins and elaborate on the factors that contributed to the emergence and subsequent exponential growth of collaborative efforts in research. In particular, we note that the emergence of internet technologies has the potential to provide a strong impetus to growth in collaborative research. It is much easier now to use newly developed internet tools to find researchers who have similar interests, to engage in synchronous conversation with a group of collaborators, to exchange data and to engage in meaningful intellectual discourse. We conclude this chapter by discussing the costs and benefits of collaboration and the obstacles that collaborators have to be aware of when pursuing research in its various collaborative manifestations.