Open Agriculture and the Right-to-Repair Community Movement

Technological changes in the agriculture industry cause shifts in the roles and power relations of stakeholders. As stakeholders vie for control of intellectual property and increased revenue, tensions can be observed through the emergence of open agriculture and the right-to-repair community movements. The goal of this research-in-progress paper aims to explore these tensions and offers a background of current research, providing a road map for our continued work. Research investigating information technology use in agriculture, precision farming, agriculture decision support, and analytics is relevant and important for the Information Systems discipline because it continues to push the investigation of the changing nature of work due to technology

Knowing and Designing: Understanding Information Use in Open Source Design Through the Lens of Information Archetypes

The early phases of the product design process are crucial to the success of design outcomes. While information utilized during idea development has tremendous potential to impact the final design, there is a lack of understanding about the types of information utilized in industry, making it challenging to develop and teach methodologies that support the design of competitive products. As a first step in understanding this process, this study focuses on developing a framework of Information Archetypes utilized by designers in industry. This was accomplished through in-depth analysis of qualitative interviews with large software engineering companies. The results reveal two archetypes of information utilized by decision-makers within these companies during the development of new products and services. The findings of this study allow for future research that investigates the role of information during the product design process

“Something to talk about” Exploring open source design spaces

Open source projects are dynamic environments where individuals and organizations collaborate to accomplish mutually beneficial design tasks. Open source designers utilize different design spaces, including discussion spaces (where conversation happens) and implementation spaces (where work happens) to complete design tasks. To investigate the relationship between discussion spaces, implementation spaces, and the completion of design tasks in open source projects, this research explores design as it occurs in organizational-communal open source projects under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation and focuses on design processes of three projects – Kubernetes, GRPC, and Zephyr. Design tasks - that include discussion spaces linked to implementation spaces - are successfully completed at a higher rate, than those with no link. This research demonstrates that the discussion space - implementation space relationship plays a key role in open source design processes

Eight Observations and 24 Research Questions About Open Source Projects: Illuminating New Realities

The rapid acceleration of corporate engagement with open source projects is drawing out new ways for CSCW researchers to consider the dynamics of these projects. Research must now consider the complex ecosystems within which open source projects are situated, including issues of for-profit motivations, brokering foundations, and corporate collaboration. Localized project considerations cannot reveal broader workings of an open source ecosystem, yet much empirical work is constrained to a local context. In response, we present eight observations from our eight-year engaged field study about the changing nature of open source projects. We ground these observations through 24 research questions that serve as primers to spark research ideas in this new reality of open source projects. This paper contributes to CSCW in social and crowd computing by delivering a rich and fresh look at corporately-engaged open source projects with a call for renewed focus and research into newly emergent areas of interest

Welcome? Investigating the reception of new contributors to organizational-communal open source software projects

The way new contributors are received by the established contributors in an open source project is a factor in whether they will become more regular contributors. This research examines the reception of new contributors in three open source projects to discover whether there are differences in how established contributors respond to new contributors, and if so, what those differences are. Through statistical analysis of time to first response and sentiment analysis of that response to a new contributor’s issue, we found that there is a difference in both the speed and content of responses to new contributors’ issues as opposed to those of established contributors. This difference suggests that the open source projects we observed are attentive to whether an issue was created by a new contributor and may make an effort to respond in a welcoming manner

Contemporary Issues of Open Data in Information Systems Research: Considerations and Recommendations

Researchers, governments, and funding agencies are calling on research disciplines to embrace open data—data that anyone can access and use. They have done so based on the premise that research efforts can draw and generate several benefits from open data because it might provide further insight and enable individuals to replicate and extend current knowledge in different contexts. These potential benefits, coupled with a global push towards open data policies, bring open data into the agenda of research disciplines, which includes information systems (IS). In this paper, we respond to these developments as follows. We outline themes in the ongoing discussion around open data in the IS discipline. The themes fall into two clusters: 1) the motivation for open data includes themes of mandated sharing, benefits to the research process, extending the life of research data, and career impact; and 2) the implementation of open data includes themes of governance, socio-technical system, standards, data quality, and ethical considerations. In this paper, we outline the findings from a pre-ICIS 2016 workshop on the topic of open data. The workshop discussion confirmed themes and identified issues that require attention in terms of the approaches that IS researchers currently use. The IS discipline offers a unique knowledge base, tools, and methods that can advance open data across disciplines. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions on how IS researchers can drive the open data conversation. Further, we provide advice for adopting and establishing procedures and guidelines for archiving, evaluating, and using open data

OPEN COMMUNITY HEALTH: WORKSHOP REPORT

This report summarizes key outcomes from a workshop on open community health conducted at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in April 2018. Workshop members represented research and practice communities across Citizen Science, Open Source, and Wikipedia. The outcomes from the workshop include (1) comparisons among these communities, (2) how a shared understanding and assessment of open community health can be developed, and (3) a taxonomical comparison to begin a conversation between these communities that have developed disparate languages

Contemporary issues of open data in information systems research: considerations and recommendations

Researchers, governments, and funding agencies are calling on research disciplines to embrace open dataâ data that anyone can access and use. They have done so based on the premise that research efforts can draw and generate several benefits from open data because it might provide further insight and enable individuals to replicate and extend current knowledge in different contexts. These potential benefits, coupled with a global push towards open data policies, bring open data into the agenda of research disciplines, which includes information systems (IS). In this paper, we respond to these developments as follows. We outline themes in the ongoing discussion around open data in the IS discipline. The themes fall into two clusters: 1) the motivation for open data includes themes of mandated sharing, benefits to the research process, extending the life of research data, and career impact; and 2) the implementation of open data includes themes of governance, socio-technical system, standards, data quality, and ethical considerations. In this paper, we outline the findings from a pre-ICIS 2016 workshop on the topic of open data. The workshop discussion confirmed themes and identified issues that require attention in terms of the approaches that IS researchers currently use. The IS discipline offers a unique knowledge base, tools, and methods that can advance open data across disciplines. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions on how IS researchers can drive the open data conversation. Further, we provide advice for adopting and establishing procedures and guidelines for archiving, evaluating, and using open data

Shared Design: Design Discourse in Open Source Software Communities

Design — at the junction of technology, organizations, and individuals — is important to Information Systems research. In this study, open source software projects provide the context for exploring design. Communities often have specialized discourses and vocabularies that are embodied within actions of the community. To understand design as a shared process, I propose a qualitative field study to examine design discourse in large collaborative corporate design processes through interviews and content analysis of trace data. I tell a story of shared design as it occurs in three open source software communities — CHAOSS, Kubernetes, and Hyperledger. Specifically, I explore the central role of discourse in these complex environments through the lens of Stigmergy. Through the examination of discourse and coordination in open source projects, I will provide a theoretical critique of Stigmergic Theory by extending the many paths of discourse evident in the shared design processes associated with open source software development