Venture Labor| Fifteen Implications of Networked Scholar Research for Networked Work

Authors

  • Barry Wellman University of Toronto
  • Dimitrina Dimitrova York University
  • Tsahi Hayat IDC Herzliya
  • Guang Ying Mo University of Toronto Mississauga
  • Beverly Wellman University of Toronto

Keywords:

networked work, networked scholars, digital media, proximity

Abstract

Networked work is the venture labor of workers involved in multiple teams. Scholars are a special kind of networked workers, partially involved in temporary teams to produce findings, presentations, papers, and patents. Many networked scholars are linked across universities by common interests, data stores, opportunities for research funding, and publications. Our NAVEL team’s study of 144 Canadian scholars in the GRAND network found that already-networked scholars were more likely to be recruited into new research teams. Although network members were officially equal, senior and entrepreneurial scholars were more equal than others. Despite norms of interdisciplinarity, scholars in the same subfields sought out one another. Although the scholars used multiple digital means to communicate, in-person meetings—and hence physical proximity—ruled..

Author Biographies

Barry Wellman, University of Toronto

Sociologist Barry Wellman co-directs the NetLab Network. He's been studying community and social networks since 1967. Wellman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the founder of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, and the co-author of Networked: The New Social Operating System. He's the former chair of the Communications, Information and Media section of the American Sociological Association. Wellman led the NAVEL study and was the principal author of this article, integrating input from others.

Dimitrina Dimitrova, York University

Dr. Dimitrova teaches organizational studies at York University and does research on issues at the intersection of social networks, organizations, knowledge work, and knowledge transfer. She has recently studied the Twitter networks emerging in social media campaigns. Her work has appeared in multiple journal articles and book chapters. She has published on scholarly networks, networked organizations, and communities of practices. 

Tsahi Hayat, IDC Herzliya

Dr. Hayat is a faculty at the Sammy Ofer school of communication, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel. Dr. Hayat's research focuses complex socio-technical systems, networks of people, artifacts, data and ideas. Dr. Hayat is particularly interested in how new technologies such as tablets, smartphones and social media platforms may enable or hinder the transfer of different resources within social networks. Dr. Hayat's publications cover topics such as networked work, innovations, social support, and social network theory and   methods. Dr. Hayat's research has been supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program (OGS), Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) of Canada, the Mitacs-Accelerate Program, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Engage grant.

Guang Ying Mo, University of Toronto Mississauga

Guang Ying Mo is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Information, Communication, Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Dr. Mo's research examines the mechanisms of collaboration across knowledge-based boundaries and its impact on the creation of innovation. She focuses on the role of networks among collaborators and the use of information and communication technologies during collaborative processes. Dr. Mo's research has been supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program (OGS), Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) of Canada, the Mitacs-Accelerate Program, and CANARIE.

Beverly Wellman, University of Toronto

Beverly Wellman is a senior research associate at the Dalla Lana Faculty of Public Health at the University of Toronto. As a medical sociologist studying health networks, her research takes into account the pathways that people use to obtain health care beyond medical care. Together with Merrijoy Kelner, their CAMLab has spent more than two decades researching and writing extensively on the perspectives of patients who use complementary and alternative medicine as well as the providers who deliver such services. Currently, they are writing on the motivations of patients around the use of integrated health care centers. My contribution to this article centered around the concept of scholars needing to have a particular niche (brand) that allows them to promote their scholarly ideas as entrepreneurs.

Downloads

Published

2017-05-09

Issue

Vol. 11 (2017)

Section

Forum

License

The International Journal of Communication is an academic journal. As such, it is dedicated to the open exchange of information. For this reason, IJoC is freely available to individuals and institutions. Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be distributed for research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. However, commercial use of the IJoC website or the articles contained herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the editor. Authors who publish in The International Journal of Communication will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grants users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) This journal utilizes the LOCKSSsystem to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. The publisher perpetually authorizes participants in the LOCKSS system to archive and restore our publication through the LOCKSS System for the benefit of all LOCKSS System participants. Specifically participating libraries may:
  • Collect and preserve currently accessible materials;
  • Use material consistent with original license terms;
  • Provide copies to other LOCKSS appliances for purposes of audit and repair.
 

Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 specifies, in Section 107, the terms of the Fair Use exception: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; &
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. In accord with these provisions, the International Journal of Communication believes in the vigorous assertion and defense of Fair Use by scholars engaged in academic research, teaching and non-commercial publishing. Thus, we view the inclusion of “quotations” from existing print, visual, audio and audio-visual texts to be appropriate examples of Fair Use, as are reproductions of visual images for the purpose of scholarly analysis. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, but do not require such permissions as long as the usage of such materials falls within the boundaries of Fair Use.

The International Journal of Communication encourages authors to employ fair use in their scholarly publishing wherever appropriate. Fair use is the right to use unlicensed copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your own work, in some circumstances. We consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication, created by the International Communication Association and endorsed by the National Communication Association, and you should too. If you have any questions about whether fair use applies to your uses of copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your scholarship, simply include your rationale, grounded in the Best Practices, as a supplementary document with your submission.