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Abstract

In the late 1950s Dr. J.C.R Licklider observed that most of his time as a researcher was spent an getting into a position to think, and not an creative thinking as such. "Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it." (see Howard Reingold: "Tools for Thought-The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology", The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts 2000, p133). A few years later Licklider became the director of ARPA, the research organization that initiated the forerunner to todays Internet, the ARPAnet. Licklider's observation might be seen as a general justification for the development of any research infrastructure, including the Internet. The overriding goal of a research infrastructure is to facilitate the maximization of the time spent an digesting and thinking over the time spent an finding and accessing. However, even today nearly 50 years after Licklider's observation and about 10 years after the invention of the World Wide Web, comparative social science research in Europe is hampered by the fragmentation of the scientific information space. Data, information and knowledge are scattered in space and divided by language and institutional barriers. As a consequence too much of the research are based an data from a single nation, carried out by a single-nation team of researcher and communicated to a single-nation audience. The state of affairs is preventing the development of a comparative and cumulative research process integrating and nurturing the entire European Research Area. Yesterday's answers to these challenges would probably have been formulated in terms of centralization and establishment of large-scale European-wide institutions. Today's answers should rather focus an the power of emerging information technologies to encourage communication, sharing and collaboration across spatially dispersed but scientifically related communities.