Creation of Social Capital in a Web Based Virtual Research Environment

This chapter investigates the emergence of Web technologies and their role in developing social capital needed for effective research collaborations. It proposes a theoretical framework to understand how virtual collaborative teams are created in such environments and how they affect the development of social capital. Furthermore it examines features and properties of Web technologies that facilitate the creation of social capital required for the successful research collaborations. As researchers increasingly turn to the Web to gain further efficiencies in their research and national economies depend more on research to compete in the global economy, it is increasingly important to understand how to create improved tools that will boost research efficiencies. Information and communications technologies (ICT) and the Web in particular, offer new opportunities in this regard. A framework for creating social capital is essential for understanding how these networks function, as we argue, and this framework will make such web-based research more effective and efficient over time.