The Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) is an interdisciplinary research group of faculty and students based across communication, information, psychology, and computing programs at several universities, including the University of Washington, Northwestern University, UT Austin, Purdue University, and the University of Idaho. Its social scientists and computer scientists study online communities and collaborative production, exploring how platforms such as Wikipedia and Linux sustain volunteer participation and create high-quality work. Research examines how communication and information technologies influence decisions to join communities, contribute to public goods, and make group decisions democratically.

The collective combines quantitative analysis, including large-scale data research, with qualitative approaches such as interviews, drawing on communication, sociology, human-computer interaction, information science, and computer science. Alongside academic research, CDSC supports public scholarship through its blog, accessible research briefs, and Science of Community Dialogues, which connect researchers with community leaders and organizers. The collective also teaches courses and offers workshops on online communities, communication, and software engineering