About

From CommunityData

The Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) is an interdisciplinary research group of faculty and students at five universities who study online communities and collaborative production. For more about our research, the institutions we're based at, and our current activities, see the main page.

CDSC members at the CDSC group retreat in October 2025 in Seattle. Check out our other group photos!

What makes the CDSC unique?[edit]

Our group operates with the same values of openness and collective peer production as the communities we study. This means we welcome anyone to join and participate in our group in whatever ways work best for them. As a result, the CDSC functions not only as a (somewhat dispersed) research lab but also as a collective of researchers and practitioners interested in peer production, online communities, and data science scholarship.

Unusually for the field, we often take an organizational-level approach to studying online communities.

Who is the CDSC for? How can you be involved?[edit]

There are a number of ways to be involved!

Important Links[edit]