Collaborative technology practices in social science early career scholarly research workflows

Abstract

Supporting scholarship as it is practiced by scholars depends on having tools which match the workflows of those scholars as they conduct research. Collaboration is an essential part of research and can occur through the stages of the research process. For early career scholars, work tends to be solo as they work on their dissertation. However, there is some evidence that their work does not occur in isolation. This is a qualitative study of early career scholars’ collaborative scholarly research workflows. It examines the role of collaboration in early career scholarly workflows, the types of tools used for collaboration, whether these tools support or hinder, and how collaborative tools support information practices and scholarly knowledge. Collaborative technology practices are seen throughout workflows and in some cases enable or hinder collaboration. There is not a strong interconnection between tools to support the scholarly workflow. This study identifies which tools are used for scholarly collaboration and the gap in functionality of tools for scholarship.