ELECTRONIC MAIL AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION - A STUDY OF THE SOAR EXTENDED RESEARCH GROUP

A new type of scientific research group is emerging-the extended research group (a large number of geographically dispersed researchers working together in a coordinated fashion). This article describes the roles that various modes of communication (such as face-to-face discussion and EMail), types of information communicated, and types of social ties played in the communication behavior of one such group, computer analysts and programmers working on a specialized language model called Soar, which stands for state operator and result. The authors show that the Soar group used different communication modes to acquire different types of information and that EMail enhanced rather than reduced the impact of traditional scientific communication networks. © 1991, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.