  Using uniaxial stress to tune the critical density near that of the sample,
we have studied in detail the low-temperature conductivity of p-type Si:B in
the insulating phase very near the metal-insulator transition. For all values
of temperature and stress, the conductivity collapses onto a single universal
scaling curve. For large values of the argument, the scaling function is well
fit by the exponentially activated form associated with variable range hopping
when electron-electron interactions cause a soft Coulomb gap in the density of
states at the Fermi energy. The temperature dependence of the prefactor,
corresponding to the T-dependence of the critical curve, has been determined
reliably for this system, and is proportional to the square-root of T. We show
explicitly that nevlecting the prefactor leads to substantial errors in the
determination of the scaling parameters and the critical exponents derived from
them. The conductivity is not consistent with Mott variable-range hopping in
the critical region nor does it obey this form for any range of the parameters.
Instead, for smaller argument of the scaling function, the conductivity of Si:B
is well fit by an exponential form with exponent 0.31 related to the critical
exponents of the system at the metal- insulator transition.
