Addressing Conflicting Cognitive Models in Collaborative E-Research: A Case Study in Exploration Geophysics

A certain number of disciplinary elds are characterized by the intersection of “soft” and “hard” sciences, resulting in the coexistence of quasi-hermeneutic and nomological approaches. Among the many that correspond to this description, such as medicine or archeology, the author focused on the geo-sciences and in particular on exploration geophysics. Here the inductive/deductive method that characterizes phys- ics meets the abductive approach of geology, creating a very fertile ground for researchers to develop concurrent cognitive models for the same issue. These contrasting visions tend to isolate themselves, thus developing speci c knowledge and practices that subsequently make them incompatible. Collaborative IGI GLOBAL PROOF research intending to bridge these communities of practices can therefore prove to be problematic, so a form of mediator becomes necessary. Most existing collaborative tools assume that partners share the same perspective on the entities they are work- ing on and therefore these solutions cannot be applied directly to the types of cases this chapter addresses. By exploring geophysics and its peculiarities, one understands its inner dynamics, so that possible solutions can be proposed. These rely on the creation of “boundary objects” capable of bridging different cognitive models. These solutions are based on the integration of diagrams, where concepts and their relations are expressed at an optimal granularity and shared spaces where information can be made available to all partners. These ideas have been implemented in a Web-based Computer-Supported Collaborative Research software