To investigate transformations in scientists' collaborative and deliberative processes during the mass adoption of socially distant, online tools throughout the course of the Covid-19 pandemic

One relatively niche but extremely important case of scientific collaboration is the "decadal survey", the process by which some research disciplines reach consensus on field-level priorities for the next ten years. In disciplines where instruments and missions are highly capital-intensive, these decadal surveys play a critical role in guiding much spending and research funding across public and private sources. The decadal process generally plays out over several years through a series of local and then international convenings, and consensus is gradually reached through deliberative discussion, argument, coaxing, side conversations, and iterative production of documents until delivery of a final report. This grant supports Janet Vertesi and David Reinecke, two sociologists, who are studying how coronavirus-forced adoption of virtual meeting and collaboration technologies has affected the decadal survey processes of three fields: planetary science, heliophysics, and astrophysics. Using a combination of interviews, archival research, and ethnographic observation, Vertesi and Reinecke will document how pandemic-focused remote work changed the survey process in these three fields--what worked better and what worked worse-with an eye towards articulating how to improve online collaboration technologies in ways that increase the benefits and decrease the costs of using them for discipline-wide scientific collaboration.