Small Science refers (in contrast to Big Science) to science performed in a smaller scale, such as by individuals, small teams or within community projects.
Bodies, which fund research, such as for example the National Science Foundation, DARPA or the EU with its Framework programs has a tendency to fund larger scale research projects. Reasons for that are the idea, that ambitious research needs significant resources devoted for its execution and the reduction of administrative and overhead costs on the funding body side. However, small science which has data that is often local and is not easily shared is funded in many areas such as chemistry and biology by these funding bodies.
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Small Science helps define the goals and directions of large scale scientific projects. In turn, results of large scale projects are often best synthesized and interpreted by the long-term efforts of the Small Science community. In addition, because Small Science is typically done at universities, it provides students and young researchers with an integral involvement in defining and solving scientific problems. Hence, small science can be seen as an important factor for bringing together science and society.
According to the Chronicle for Higher Education, James M. Caruthers, a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, data from Big Science is highly organized on the front end where researchers define it before it even starts rolling off the machines making it easier to handle, to understand, and to archive. Small Science is "horribly heterogeneous," and far more vast. In time Small Science will generate two to three times more data than Big Science.[1]
The American Geophysical Union stresses the importance of small science in a position statement.[2]
Many examples from the history of science justify that results of Small Science can have enormous impacts:
In fact, most of the research done before World War II can be viewed as Small Science.