Abstract
This chapter investigates collaborative scientific writing. The study presents a baseline and concepts embedded by research for an ad hoc group of authors. Transactive memory, which is a quality of a group achieving the desired synergy, is approached in literature through metaphors. The investigation focuses on a proposal to evaluate the transactive memory's quale. A specialization between group and team expresses the ability of online technology to enhance the authors' communication. The research examines synergy among the authors for different phases of experienced collaboration to achieve successful publishing. Three hypotheses were researched for the evaluation of transactive memory's quale. The findings suggest that the total amount of knowledge experienced by the group of authors, as resulting from the collaborative scientific writing, corresponds to the aggregated domains of deterministic and probabilistic spaces.
TopLiterature Review
The present attempt relies on a literature review to capture primary factors influencing collaborative scientific writing. Although it spans 2004 to 2017, a cluster from 2014 to 2016 retains important references regarding the topic of collaborative scientific writing.
The survey is based on the following keywords: (1) scientific writing (Ahlqvist et al., 2013; Plaxco, 2010; Sreeja, Arya, Akshara, & Swathy, 2016; Weinberger, Evans, & Allesina, 2015); (2) collaborative writing (Budker & Kimball, 2016; Keen, 2007); and (3) learning (Kolb & Kolb, 2005, 2009). Each reference adds specific keywords to the survey. Thirty-three keywords were considered for the current study, along with certain relations having an ontological foundation (Masolo, Borgo, Gangemi, Guarino, & Oltramari, 2003), to construct an overview of the domain.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Collaboration: The collaborative work by which a team achieves higher results through the implementation of synchronization and coordination.
Team: The achieved state of a group if synergy and transactive memory (TM) concepts exist for the given context.
Synergy: A concept used to explain how a team obtains high-level results through collaborative work. The transactive memory (TM) concept applies to synergy by creating a foundation to explain how a group will evolve into a team.
Cooperation: The collaborative work performed through individual actions to achieve a common goal.
Learning Space: If conditions are met, a knowledge space transforms into a learning space. This is a strong connected type when a graph structure is used to model the learning space.
Meronymy: Specialization of a part-whole relationship domain detailing the specific relation of a subfamily to a family.
Knowledge Space: A mathematical approach describing the requisites of a set of knowledge items to form a congruent conceptual space.
Knowledge Transfer: A specific complex process involved in learning.
Transactive Memory: A concept to explain the knowledge transfer processes between members of a team.