It is still an open question how the emergence and use of ICTs  have enabled changes in the science system.  According to many scholars, knowledge production and exchange are going through a transition. Knowledge production is increasingly interrelated with social and economic objectives and increasingly takes place outside the institutional regime provided by the university system and public research organizations. Furthermore, the increasing use of ICTs in knowledge production, not only as a means of communication and collaboration, but also, and increasingly, as data, methodologies, and types of output of scientific fields, has become the focus of debate within science and science policy circles around concepts such as E-science.  Originally the term E-science (also called e-Research or cyberinfrastructure) encompassed mainly large science projects, using grid computing in order to provide a powerful technology platform for distributed science. However, with the rise of the participative (Web) applications, and more widely-available computing and more participants in science networks, the scope of discussion is expanding to cover many network-enabled science activities that rely on ICTs. Part of the promise of e-Science is the idea of a unified science workflow system, that can connect instruments with computation, data with visualisation, and allow powerful analysis.  One can imagine the capabilities of such an e-Science infrastructure extending beyond just researchers to decision makers and citizens as well. In order to specify the nature of (possible) changes in knowledge production and dissemination in the information society, we view the sciences as communication systems embedded in a wider social context, which both shapes and constrains the dynamics of the sciences. The perspective introduced here argues that changes can be understood at three levels; the local practices of researching,  the exchange and coordination of knowledge and  the wider landscape of political and societal contexts in which knowledge is used. This perspective enables us to understand the separate dynamics at the local, global and contextual levels, and how the use of ICTs influences them.  

• The production of knowledge

ICTs have contributed to social and intellectual developments in knowledge production. The most visible development in the social organisation of the sciences is the emergence of new collaboration patterns of distributed teams. Cognitive developments include the availability of digital data, new instruments,  new methods of analysis (simulations, visualisations), new types of scientific output and new topics of analysis. 

• The exchange of knowledge

Although the journal-based communication system (whether paper-based or online) still has a dominant role in the disciplinary identity construction and its associated mechanisms of quality control and accumulation of knowledge, the use of ICTs has enabled new ways of collective coordination of scientific communities, leading to different possible identity-formation mechanisms, and diversifies the types of rewards available for individual scientists, thus impacting on their career-path strategies and the resource management of their local contexts, even as it and allows for accumulation of knowledge on the basis of different mechanisms than the print-based journal system. These mechanisms create new challenges but also tensions for individual scientists as well as scientific fields and their institutions; and the way these issues will stabilize in each field is expected to be very distinct. 

• The use of knowledge (in the information society)

ICTs have enabled interactions between universities, scientific communities and other societal actors, such as governments, private companies and NGOs, on the basis of a variety of mechanisms: database establishment, increasing need and reliance on theoretical knowledge, societal assessment of relevant knowledge, open innovation processes. The use of ICTs has created more direct links between the scientific community and a heterogeneous set of actors, thus introducing new uncertainties and new possibilities in knowledge production systems. 

The variety of digital data, tools, storage, processing capacity and electronic networks creates a heterogeneity that is (partially) adopted in ways that reflect different field-specific patterns and needs. Therefore, in each field, the researching environment, the formation of disciplinary identities and the interactions with society are changing in different ways through the use of ICTs. Clearly there is not one universal transition occurring across all fields.