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Introduction
Academic research has undergone radical changes in the past decades. Jacob (2000) summarized these transitions in three trends. First, a national focus has made way for a more international perspective, both in terms of research subjects and dissemination of results. Second, universities have become partners in the transformation of skilled employees and scientific knowledge into technology, goods and services. Finally, we witness an expanding integration of academic labour into the industrial economy. This trend towards more applied research also resulted in interdisciplinary scientific projects, and as such they require a wider range of skills than any single individual possesses (Hagstrom, 1964).
As such, collaboration has become an important characteristic of science today. Joint scientific work and scientific collaboration have a higher potential to solve complex scientific problems (Sonnenwald, 2007). This is illustrated by the finding that co-authored papers are cited more frequently than single-authored papers (Persson et al. , 2004). Collaboration can also offer scale advantages. In addition, scientific collaboration plays a critical role for individual scientists to develop their scientific, technical and social knowledge, skills and resources (Bozeman and Corley, 2004).
This change in research has run in parallel with an increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). How these two transitions relate to each other has been the topic of much debate. Heimeriks and Vasileiadou (2008) have argued that the differences in perception of the dynamic between these two trends have their origin in different views on knowledge production. Understanding knowledge production is an age-old philosophical question. For the purpose of this paper, it is important to point out a number of authors who have introduced a social constructionist perspective on knowledge creation. For instance, Knorr-Cetina (1981) took an anthropological approach to understand the social order of scientific environments and how these relate to knowledge creation. She has extensively illustrated how much of knowledge production is decision-laden and therefore constructive rather than descriptive. It is therefore situational and related to time and space, rather than solely to a logic of individual decision-making. Similarly, Whitley (2000) argued that the social order relates to the scientific knowledge produced in that social order. He identified two dimensions that determine what kind of scientific knowledge is produced: (a) the level of reputational competition, and (b)...