Peter Darch, Annamaria Carusi

Oxford e-Research Centre,University of Oxford

8 December 2009

peter.darch@ccc.ox.ac.uk

IntroductionVolunteer computing projects

Explosion of scientific projects requiring large-scale computing capacity (Welsh et al. 2006)

Drive for greater public engagement on the part of scientists

VCPs since 1996In a variety of scientific fields

Goals of Volunteer Computing ProjectsTo do science

e.g. BRaTS@Home

To educate and engage the publice.g. climateprediction.net; Rosetta@home

To achieve these, they need to recruit and retain volunteers

Set up in 1999, in order to study uncertainty in climate models

Became volunteer computing project, September 2003

With the support of UK e-Science (EPSRC), now ‘by far the largest full-resolution climate modelling experiment in the world‘ (Martin et al. 2005, p. 2)~57 000 active users

A ‘work unit’A single climate model (1920-2080)

Online forums

Feedback from the project ‘Credits’

Volunteers form teams, often with own web pages and forums

League tables on climateprediction.net’s website

Screensaver showing progress of the modelVisualization

http://attribution.cpdn.org/images/cloudshot_win0.gif(accessed 17 November 2008)

Two overriding (inter-related) aims:To produce scientific results

Results published in scientific journals, including Nature (e.g. Stainforth et al. (2005) has been cited 375 times)

To educate the public about climate science Materials on project website Talks in schools, universities

Also seeks to be ongoingNew projects developed

The case studyData collected:

climateprediction.net online forums

Semi-structured interviews with software engineers and scientists involed in developing and running the project

Online questionnaires for project volunteers

Papers published by technoscientists

Retaining project volunteersDifferent groups of project volunteers:

“Super-crunchers” Those who do a great deal of work for the project

Those with little prior familiarity with scientific institutions

“Alpha-testers” Those who test the new models and work units

These groups valuable to climateprediction.net in different waysAnd have different motivations for taking part

The “super-crunchers”Enjoy the prestige of doing a great deal of

scientific workPost on forums about how much they’ve done

Posts when milestones reached Signatures in forum posts:

Signatures

The “super-crunchers”Do a great deal of work for the project

~10% of credit awarded to ~0.2% of active volunteers

~60% of credits awarded to ~10% of volunteers

How they are retained:Forums and teamsAnd credit system

Stability Consistency

Those with few links to scientific institutionsVery important group from point of view of

public outreach

No other apparent links to technoscientific institutions

Relatively low credit scores Participate in only a handful of other BOINC

projects, if at all ~75% of volunteers; but <25% of credits assigned

to them

Those with few links to scientific institutionsGenerally believed by those launching VCPs

that they are interested in:VisualizationsBeing educated about the science behind the

VCP

More interestedBeing reassured that they are making a

contribution Cumulative credit system Regular feedback about scientific results

The “alpha-testers”Important contribution to the ongoing nature

of the project

Test new models and work units

15, 20, 30 or more BOINC projects So may not be available for testing

The “alpha-testers”Little trust in the other volunteers

Belief that these volunteers know little about science

Instead, belief that volunteers are motivated primarily by credit system

Need credit system with consistent/inflexible rules

ConclusionsGoals of running a VCP

To do scienceTo engage/educate the public

Decisions to be madeOngoing vs one-offWhat to offer the volunteers

Educational material Visualizations Policies regarding systems of credit

ConclusionsDifferent groups of volunteers

“Super-crunchers”Those with little prior engagement with science“Alpha-testers”

Contribution towards different goals

Different ways of engaging and retaining themAll motivated by the belief that the project

produces worthwhile science

AcknowledgmentsParticular thanks to:

Milo Thurston & Tolu Aina, who work on running and maintaining climateprediction.net, for their time and for cyber-introductions to climateprediction.net volunteers

mo.v and Thyme Lawn, two climateprediction.net forum moderators, for advice on how to approach their online community and for promoting my project on the climateprediction.net forums

The many climateprediction.net volunteers

ReferencesMartin, A., Aina, T., Christensen, C., Kettleborough, J.

& Stainforth, D. (2005) ‘On two kinds of public-resource distributed computing’, Prodceedings of Fourth UK e-Science All-Hands Meeting.

Stainforth, D., Aina, T., Christensen, C., Collins, M., Faull, N., Frame, D., Kettleborough, J., Knight, S., Martin, A., Murphy, J., Piani, C., Sexton, D., Smith, L., Spicer, R., Thorpe, A. & Allen, M.. (2005). ‘Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases.’ Nature, vol. 433, pp. 404-406.

Welsh, E., Jirotka, M. & Gavaghan, D. (2006) ‘Post-genomic science: cross-disciplinary and large-scale collaborative research and its organizational and technological challenges for the scientific research process’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, vol. 364, no. 1843, pp. 1533-1549.