  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 collaborations. 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 exploits 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 worlds similar to the way
in which the humans that use the network do in their social interactions?
