Abstract

Collaboration is a core activity at the heart of large-scale co-
operative scientific experimentation. In order to support the
emergence of Grid-based scientific collaboration, new models of
e-Science working methods are needed.
Scientific collaboration involves production and manipulation of
various artefacts. Based on work done in the software
engineering field, this paper proposes models and tools which
will support the representation and production of such artefacts.
It is necessary to provide facilities to classify, organise, acquire,
process, share, and reuse artefacts generated during collaborative
working. The concept of a "design space" will be used to
organise scientific design and the composition of experiments,
and methods such as self-organising maps will be used to support
the reuse of existing artefacts.
It is proposed that this work can be carried out and evaluated in
the UK e-Science community, using an "industry as laboratory"
approach to the research, building on the knowledge, expertise,
and experience of those directly involved in e-Science.