Principles for cultivating scientific communities of practice

Scientific communities can be seen as a specific type of Communities of Practice (CoP). In this paper we analyze scientific communities from the CoP point of view. We show how models and design principles from CoP can be interpreted and adapted for scientific communities. Taking the CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) community as an example, we instantiate the adapted design principles and trace the development of this community based on an analysis of its first decade of existence (1995-2005). This analysis includes an analysis of CSCL conference proceedings and an analysis of the lists of participants and program committee members of CSCL conferences.