There has been a lot action recently on electronic collaboration among academics, mostly through the sciences, but that just may be due to my monitoring the sciences more than other disciplines. Within the last few months publishers have offered researchers networking options, mimicking many social networking sites on the Internet.

Here are a couple of articles that report on researcher collaboration:

Scientists’ collaboration strategies: implications for scientific and technical human capital
Barry Bozeman,a and Elizabeth Corley,b
a School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
b School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-0603, USA
Science Communication, Vol. 19, No. 2, 124-140 (1997)

Here are a few websites that offer researcher collaboration venues:

Nature
http://network.nature.com/

Elsevier
http://www.2collab.com/

ACS
http://exchange.chemistry.org/cms/

ISI Web of Knowledge
http://isiwebofknowledge.com/researcherid/

BiomedExperts
http://www.biomedexperts.com/

Jean-Claude Brandley Useful Chemistry Blog+
http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/