Internet practice and professional networks in Chilean science: Dependency or progress?

The conventional view depicts scientific communities in the developing world as globally isolated and dependent. Recent studies suggest that individual scientists tend to favor either local or international ties. Yet there are good reasons to believe that both kinds of ties are beneficial for knowledge production. Since they allow for the more efficient management of social networks, Internet technologies are expected to resolve this inverse relationship. They are also expected to decentralize access to resources within developing regions that have traditionally reflected an urban male bias. Elaborating upon science, development and social network perspectives, we examine the impact of the Internet in the Chilean scientific community, addressing the questions ‘to what extent is Internet use and experience associated with the size of foreign and domestic professional networks?’ and ‘are professional network resources equitably distributed across regional and demographical dimensions?’ We offer results from a communication network survey of 337 Chilean researchers working in both academic departments and research institutes. We introduce a new measure, ‘collaboration range’, to indicate the extent to which scientists engage in work with geographically dispersed contacts. Results suggest that larger foreign networks are associated with higher email use and diversity, but local networks are smaller with longer use of the Internet. Diversity of email use is also associated with diverse geographical networks. Moreover, Internet use may be reducing the significance of international meetings for scientific collaboration and networking. Finally, results also show that in the Internet age professional network resources are distributed symmetrically throughout the Chilean scientific community.