Open source software field research: Spanning social and practice networks for re-entering the field

Abstract

Sociotechnical research increasingly includes multitude of social and practice networks that emerge from large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure, including the infrastructure for building open source software. This paper addresses the investigation of these numerous networks as advantageous for researchers. It provides a methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent social and practical networks during engaged scholarship. For example, spanning between corporate open source networks and scientific open source networks. Specifically, we describe practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social and practice network within a more extensive technical infrastructure to another. To surface the importance of spanning networks, we incorporate a discussion of social capital and the role of technical infrastructure in its development for sociotechnical researchers. We characterize a five-step process for spanning social and practice networks during engaged scholarship: commitment, context mapping, jargon competence, returning value, and bridging. We then present our experience studying corporate open source software projects and the role of that experience in accelerating our work in open source scientific software research as described through the lens of social capital. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations for engaging in work in adjacent social and practice networks that share a technical context and a discussion of how the relationship between social and technically acquired social capital is a missing but critical methodological dimension for research on large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure.