Data-sharing scientific collaborations have particular characteristics, potentially different from the current peer-to-peer environments. In this paper we advocate the benefits of exploiting emergent patterns in self-configuring networks specialized for scientific data-sharing collaboration. We speculate that a peer-to-peer scientific collaboration network will exhibit small-world topology, as do a large number of social networks for which the same pattern has been documented. We propose a solution for locating data in decentralized, scientific, data-sharing environments that exploiter the small-worlds topology. The research challenge we raise is: what protocols should be used to allow a self-configuring peer-to-peer network to form small world similar to the way in which the humans that use the network do in their social interactions?
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