The Ph.D. project analyses contemporary Big Science facilities and its users, and how they affect the patterns of collaboration and productivity in the natural sciences. It aims to assess the premise that big machines are generic resources significant enough to give rise to new patterns of collaboration; that they promote interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research efforts; and that they positively impact scientific output and quality. It contributes a quantitative approach to the current literature using statistical analysis and techniques from computational social sciences on bibliometric data and user data.