Cooperative e-organizations for distributed bioinformatics experiments

Large-scale collaboration is a key success factor in today scientific experiments, usually involving a variety of digital resources, while Cooperative Information Systems (CISs) represent a feasible solution for sharing distributed information sources and activities. On this premise, the aim of this paper is to provide a paradigm for modeling scientific experiments as distributed processes that a group of scientists may go through on a network of cooperative e-nodes interacting with one another in order to offer or to ask for services. By discussing a bioinformatics case study, the paper details how the problem solving strategy related to a scientific experiment can be expressed by a workflow of single cooperating activities whose implementation is carried out on a prototypical service-based scientific environment.