Advances in information and communication technology are transforming theway scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines. The use of increasinglypowerful and versatile computer-based and networked systems promises to changeresearch activity as profoundly as the mobile phone, the Internet, and email havechanged everyday life. This book offers a comprehensive and accessible view of theuse of these new approaches--called "e-Research"--and their ethical, legal, and institutional implications. The contributors, leading scholars from arange of disciplines, focus on how e-Research is reshaping not only how research isdone but also, and more important, its outcomes. By anchoring their discussion inspecific examples and case studies, they identify and analyze a promising set ofpractical developments and results associated with e-Research innovations. Thecontributors, who include Geoffrey Bowker, Christine Borgman, Paul Edwards, TimBerners-Lee, and Hal Abelson, explain why and how e-Research activity canreconfigure access to networks of information, expertise, and experience, changingwhat researchers observe, with whom they collaborate, how they share information, what methods they use to report their findings, and what knowledge is required to dothis. They discuss both the means of e-Research (new research-centered computationalnetworks) and its purpose (to improve the quality of world-wide research). WilliamH. Dutton is Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor of InternetStudies, and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College at the University of Oxford.Paul W. Jeffreys, formerly Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre, is Director ofIT at the University of Oxford, Professor of Computing, and Professorial Fellow ofKeble College at the University of Oxford.