Virtual Methods

176 • Han Woo Park and Mike Thelwall
the exchange of scholarly information and informal messages among scientists.
Past research indicates that a variety of novel forms of digital technologies may
make possible more efficient and flexible modes of communication and collaboration
in scientific research: online journals (Hawkins 2001); e-print servers (Kling,
McKim and King 2001), groupware (Majchrzak et al. 2000), email (Cohen 1996),
collaboratories (Finholt 2002), and instant messaging services (Nardi, Whittaker
and Bradner 2000). Also, social network analysts (Koku, Nazer and Wellman
2000; Walsh et al. 2000; Matzat 2001; Walsh and Maloney 2002) have examined
patterns of communication relations and new media use among scientific
researchers, based upon their working and social relations such as scientific productivities,
the frequency of collaborative communications, the information
exchange relationships, and the types of communication technologies used. They
found that those who had collaborative communication more frequently tended to
be more productive (in terms of authored articles, see Walsh et al. 2000; Walsh and
Maloney 2002) and were involved in more types of information exchange relationships
and new communication media (see Wellman and his colleagues’ works
at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/index.html, accessed 4
November 2004). The findings of network analyses also suggest that the closeness
or strength of work ties (such as the frequency of co-authoring papers) is generally
associated with the number of information exchanges, collaboration, and new
technologies used among the researchers.
Hyperlinks and Science Communication
The development of network approaches for researching the web opens up possibilities
and opportunities for analyzing the configuration of scientific and research
communication networks on the web. Concepts and methods of network theory
applied to various kinds of social relations on the web can also be used to study
the role of web hyperlinks in the scientific and research communities. Individual
researchers and academic organizations form and maintain communication relations,
setting up hyperlinks to people, scholarly articles, journals, research tools,
databases or institutions with shared interests and topics on their web pages or
web-accessible documents. The advent of electronic journals transforms a traditional
text into a hypertext that enables authors to hyperlink to cited literature
(Zhang 1998; Kim 2000). Nowadays, many scientific and research conferences
make their programs and abstracts available on the web and, occasionally, their
participants’ information such as email addresses or websites hyperlinked from
conference sites. Audiences who want more detailed information are able to
contact participants.
One use of hyperlinking is for collaborating researchers and institutes to
connect to relevant materials, useful information, research tools and projects
hosted on partners’ locations without having to archive those resources in their