ABSTRACT
The advent and proliferation of global computer networks have altered the practice of science, and additional changes seem sure to come. Scientists already routinely collaborate and access informational resources by way of the Internet and associated technologies (Glasner, 1996). Further advances in this direction are contemplated via so-called Grid technologies to enable collaborative sharing of both information and resources on an international scale (Hey & Trfethen, 2003; Newman, Ellisman, & Orcutt, 2003). Such distributed computing architectures promise to make available processing power, data storage, and related large-scale computing resources independent of geographic location. Researchers participating in such technological collaborations are increasingly drawn into distributed communities and far-fl ung alliances that were previously impossible (Finholt, 2002).
