OpenWetWare, which Hoatlin saw in the spring of 2006, fit the bill perfectly. "The transparency turned out to be very powerful," she says. "I came to love the interaction, the fact that people in other labs could comment on what we do and vice versa. When I see how fast that is, and its power to move science forward--there is nothing like it."
Numerous others now work through OpenWetWare to coordinate research. SyntheticBiology.org, one of the site's most active interest groups, currently comprises six laboratories in three states, and includes postings about jobs, meetings, discussions of ethics, and much more.
In short, OpenWetWare has quickly grown into a social network catering to a wide cross-section of biologists and biological engineers. It currently encompasses laboratories on five continents, dozens of courses and interest groups, and hundreds of protocol discussions--more than 6100 Web pages edited by 3,000 registered users. A May 2007 grant from the National Science Foundation launched the OpenWetWare team on a five-year effort to transform OpenWetWare to a self-sustaining community independent of its current base at MIT. The grant will also support development of many new practical tools, such as ways to interface biological databases with the wiki, as well as creation of a generic version of OpenWetWare that can be used by other research communities such as neuroscience, as well as by individual investigators.
Skepticism Persists
For all the participants' enthusiasm, however, this wide-open approach to science still faces intense skepticism. Even Hoatlin found the openness unnerving at first. "Now I'm converted to open wikis for everything possible," she says. "But when I originally joined I wanted to keep everything private"--not least to keep her lab pages from getting trashed by some random hacker. She did not relax until she began to understand the system's built-in safeguards.
First and foremost, says MIT's Kelly, "you can't hide behind anonymity." By default, OpenWetWare pages are visible to anyone (although researchers have the option to make pages private.) But unlike the oft-defaced Wikipedia, the system will let users make changes only after they have registered and established that they belong to a legitimate research organization. "We've never yet had a case of vandalism," Kelly says. Even if they did, the wiki automatically maintains a copy of every version of every page posted: "You could always just roll back the damage with a click of your mouse."
Unfortunately, this kind of technical safeguard does little to address a second concern: Getting scooped and losing the credit. "That's the first argument people bring to the table," says Drexel University chemist Jean-Claude Bradley, who created his independent laboratory wiki, UsefulChem, in December 2005. Even if incidents are rare in reality, Bradley says, everyone has heard a story, which is enough to keep most scientists from even discussing their unpublished work too freely, much less posting it on the Internet.
However, the Web provides better protection that the traditional journal system, Bradley maintains. Every change on a wiki gets a time-stamp, he notes, “so if someone actually did try to scoop you, it would be very easy to prove your priority--and to embarrass them. I think that's really what is going to drive open science: the fear factor. If you wait for the journals, your work won't appear for another six to nine months. But with open science, your claim to priority is out there right away."
Under Bradley's radically transparent "open notebook" approach, as he calls it, everything goes online: experimental protocols, successful outcomes, failed attempts, even discussions of papers being prepared for publication. "A simple wiki makes an almost perfect lab notebook," he declares. The time-stamps on every entry not only establish priority, but allow anyone to track the contributions of every person, even in a large collaboration.
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139 Comments
Add CommentMany thanks for a timely, balanced, substantive piece.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI applaud SciAm for their leadership and predict great things will come of it.
My only suggestion concerns the use of the word, 'explosively,' at the beginning of the article, being heartily weary of hearing so many explosions.
I should like to add that my own experience with Science 2.0 has been most gratifying; I had to change the culture before people were able to get what I was on about. The web made that process relatively painless, allowing me to avoid the bottleneck of peer review -- an annoyance notably complicated by the absence of peers.
I am somewhat dubious of such openness for three key reasons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first reason is obvious. Given that you are posting this essential data on protocols and such, it does open the research up to some not-so-germane uses. It doesn't take much imagination to see where this point goes. Accidental misuse of information is just as bad as purposeful malice using that information.
Second reason? The information itself could be incomplete to start with and land anyone into a serious world of hurt, either argumentative or physically. Science always adapts, but not necessarily fast enough to prevent injuries at times.
The third reason is an extension of both the first and second reasons. Some information was not meant to be known early, period. Whether a great advance in some technique or technology, the risks are great if not properly assessed first in a peer-review setting.
Corvus,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not possible to control or even predict how information will be used. There is nothing stopping anyone from walking into a library and learning how to do any published experiment. Authors make no warranties about their findings - they report the truth as best they can. Sometimes warnings are printed for obviously dangerous protocols (e.g. when explosive compounds are used) but that is unusual. What we're trying to do with Open Notebook Science is report more quickly, as we learn.
The concept of an open, shared information, shared research community taken to full extremism points hopefully and almost abortively at a form of communism. We knew this, however, or should have known this when the internet was first conceived. We are now finally reaching something like a collective consciousness because of these machines. The verge of telepathy, blogging reveals insights into fellow humans minds. Great risks and great possibilities can come of this, but to avoid most of the risks, we will need to shrug off all of our fears and hysterias and begin to instead trust and embrace one another. We fear one another to the point that we lock up tight our invention, our brilliance, and hide away all the good that can come of it. This secrecy and hording spawns ever more fear and such is the essence of greed. Copyright laws infringe on the advancement of shared ideas and thusly on the advancement of our species. The scientific community will face many of the same right-to-profit issues as the music industry has. The collective consciousness of the interweb has already spun into a debate pitting greed and personal gain of few against free sharing and prosperity of the many in the RIAA suits currently being debated. .mp3s and .vids are being wielded like pitchforks and torches by the proletariat against the crushing clutches of corporate kings. When a scientific idea is proposed and then copied and stolen, the only way for humankind to prosper is if no one tries to rise higher than the rest by climbing on the corpses of colleagues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne aspect of user contribution is that if the author is lucky enough to have talented readers s/he can provide a "Mad Libs" style article and just hope they fill in all the blanks with meaningful information for them. I think this is a/an*adjective* advancement for both lazy and intelligent *plural noun* everywhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the development of "science 2.0" is allowed to mature naturally, there should be sufficient time for any problems to be ironed out and proper safeguards to be implemented. For example, the time stamping issue seems appropriate, although it concerns me that this might be abused in that people might rush to print information before sufficient evidence has been collected. Altogether, though, any additional ways of communicating science ideas, such as is presented in this article, is always beneficial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs long as the aspects of science 2.0 are allowed to evolve naturally, and that sufficient safeguards are implemented, For example, the time stamping could be abused where people rush to get their information posted first, even if it isn't ready for print. With precausions taken, though, the time stamping should help avoid issues of scooping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see no real problems with it, only benefits. Additional communication in science has always been beneficial.
in the intro you ask if researchers should "keep quite" but I think you may have meant "quiet"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that the concept of Science 2.0 is perfectly viable as long as a framework exists for incorporating one of the big positives for the current journal system - peer review.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI actually had an idea in this area a few months back (spontaneous and personal scientific publishing) and determined that a need existed for a Reputation Management system. That is, a central database responsible for tracking the reputation of those participating in the 'Science 2.0' community. Whenever a blog is posted or an article uploaded to an open scientific database, the article may be registered with a peer review system. Members of the system may review the article and rate it, and the weighting of their rating would be determined by their reputation in the 'Rep management system'. As those articles rated by them become rated by others with high reputations this could act to increase their own rep, in a kind of feedback system.
Referencing should also remain a strict priority in all such 'blogs'.
One of the reasons I left science after my Ph.D. was because of the isolationist culture. In fact, one scientist, by way of giving me negative feedback, told me that he felt that I had too many interests to be successful in physics research. I decided to take that as a compliment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I acknowledge that making progress in any field (scientific or otherwise) requires focus, but that focus should not come at the expense of understanding of the world around us. Most often , this is focus and intensity is achieved by creating artificial barriers which prevent outsiders (even if scientifically trained if other disciplines) from participating and contributing to the development of scientific fields. It is also accomplished by segregating science (e.g. physics) from our daily lives and experiences. What is physics if not an attempt at explaining the natural wonders we see in the world surrounding us whether it is the shining of stars or the sharpness of a blade of grass? The greatest scientists in history have been those who did compartmentalize their curiosity about the world into a narrow field of science, but the ones who have tried to understand and apply science across disciplines.
So, I hope that the opening of science through Web 2.0 technologies, would remove the isolationist culture and bring in a valuable interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration to science.
...experiment in open peer review, with pre-publication manuscripts made available for public comment
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Nature Precedings (assuming that's what you mean -- precedings.nature.com) is more than just an experiment in open peer review; it's arXiv for biology. That's a big deal; ask any physicist.
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Edited by Bill Hooker at 01/10/2008 12:12 AM
"...experiment in open peer review, with pre-publication manuscripts made available for public comment"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis phrase ceretainly is ambiguous. I read it as meaning the Open Peer review trial that Nature the journal ran over the summer of 2006 and which wasn't much of a success. I agree that Nature Preceedings isn't a trial but a fully fledged pre-print server for biological sciences. I guess it could be regarded as an experiment as all of the attempts at "Science 2.0" are experiments as they are far too young to know what will ultimately happen to them. Nature Preceedings may be more of an experiment as it is far from clear whether the biological sciences wants a pre-print server. ArXive was launched into a culture of wide sharing papers before publication to formal journals, thus facilitating existing behaviour. I think that a good test of success for Nature Preceedings when items presented there are reported on and cited in the same way that papers in ArXive are.
the essay which will be pulished in journal can be criticized and amended by faults and other scientists if it has been upload to the scholar-wiki website. I think this is good for the author himself, meanwhile good for audiences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBill Hooker makes a good point that there are already Science 2.0 vehicles out there (like Nature Precedings and PLoSONE) that allow for some form of peer review. That serves a purpose but it is unrealistic to expect the peer-review system to monitor the "quality" of all the science being discussed. Scientists just don't have enough time on their hands to comment on everything posted. And even if they did, how are the reviewers being qualified?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we're headed in a direction where the volume of information produced is going to be vastly greater than the ability of any human system to monitor in real time. In just my lab alone, during some periods there may be dozens of updates a day on our lab notebook wiki. As the PI, even I can't address all of those updates in real time.
A better solution is to expect scientists to post the raw data of their experiments and link to those results every time they make observations and conclusions. If I am a scientist and I wish to use to evaluate the validity of the claims, I'll look at the evidence and make my own conclusions. If little or no evidence is provided, I'll just walk away. Or if the interpretation is not valid, I can still just use the raw result data and ignore the interpretations. Better yet, use the data and alert the researcher of my alternative conclusions.
first of all I personally am not in the field, but I love to read about up coming fields and am well read on many new and up coming sciences (if only my spelling and grammar were better) with that said here is my input on "science 2.0"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that with these communities you really have to worry about some person stumbling across information with a limited knowledge of the sujects being talked about. Mainly because if indeed they have the security measures in place you have to register and (I would hope) go through some background search (or at the minimum) atleast verified that you do indeed attend where you say you do.
Second I think to further make the information legitimate there should be 2 types of these communities maybe one built into each other a "private" and a "public" something so that the researchers can write down and have other collegues discuss then post it on the public there for limited the risk of premature exposure and furthering the crediblity.
I think that Web 2.0 has fantastic potential to open up science to everyone. It's not just tenured academics who have a monopoly on good ideas. Perhaps if intelligent laypeople had a greater opportunity to contribute then there'd be less public disaffection with science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I also think that there is a rather less savoury side to Web 2.0 as well. You just need to look at the scorn recently and unjustifiably heaped upon one surfing physicist for having the temerity to suggest that string theory might not be the only way of looking at the universe, and weblogs were the primary conduit for that scorn.
It was a sad episode and said a good deal more about his traducers and their narrow minded approach than the man himself. If some people approach this new way of communicating with an old-style closed mentallity that assumes that imperfect, hypothetical and incomplete information is valueless, then they will either kill this new medium or end up being sidelined. We can only hope it's the latter.
I'm not a scientist, but I am a huge fan of writer Waldrop's "Complexity," and I'm excited to see his experiment with online community here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany of the issues, quotes and comments here apply to other fields of knowledge and business, and I hope to follow these efforts and learn.
My focus is on journalism and technology. Take some comments and substitute the word "journalism" for "science," and the issues and evolving questions still apply.
Example from a comment:
"I think that Web 2.0 has fantastic potential to open up science (substitute journalism) to everyone. It's not just tenured academics ("mainstream media") who have a monopoly on good ideas. Perhaps if intelligent laypeople had a greater opportunity to contribute then there'd be less public disaffection with science (substitute "journalism").
Openness is fine, but it starts with each individual, from the bottom up rather than the top down. All this hopeful, happy talk is building upon weak and rotting foundations, carelessly untended for generations now. Most scientists are unaware that science is in crisis--not from attacks from religious fundamentalists but from its own dogmas and virulent mob psychology toward ideas, put forward by scientists, critical of current theories and speculations. Where do I, as a scientist with great new knowledge at odds with current theories, get the financial support I need to live and get my work recognized? To call experiments in Science 2.0 a "Darwinian process" illustrates the unexamined, widespread weakness within science today: Ideas don't win out through consensus of opinion, or intellectual "natural selection", but because they are true. Science has not been self-correcting for all of my life (I am 59 now), and that is what is missing in this article and throughout science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi've been doing bioinformatic research for the past 10 yrs. In genomics, its commonly understood that it is 20 yrs behind in standard CS practices and proteomics is another 5 yrs behind that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseveryone needs to understand that the people in charge of science, are people who never grew up playing nintendo or atari. While researching at Harvard, I encountered profs who recently learned how to email (2-3 yrs ago) and still write all their documents by hand, but perhaps worst question I've ever been asked is "how do viruses infect computers?" Thinking that viruses affect computers by coughing on them.
Technology is not the problem for the adoption of "science 2.0." The problem is with the culture of science. And perhaps the biggest cultural difference in research, is that you write grants to get money upfront, to do your research, as opposed to getting paid or credit for what actually works.
I highly agree with former Intel's CEO, Andrew Grove, "The peer review system in grant making and in academic advancement has the major disadvantage of creating conformity of thoughts and values. It's a modern equivalent of a Middle Ages guild, where you have to sing a particular way to get grants, promotions and tenure. The pressure to conform means you lose the people who want to get up and go in a different direction. There is no place for the wild ducks. The result is more sameness and less innovation. What we need is a cultural revolution in the research community, academic and non-academic. We need to give wild ducks the opportunity to emerge and quack their way to success. But cultural change can be driven only by action at the top."
from: http://www.newsweek.com/id/68221
And if you are really dedicated to science, you will get paid much less to do cancer research than to implement any standard web 2.0 technology. How many qualified people are going to choose a research career that pays 1/2 the amount of making standard web pages?
In addition to my last comment, I've posted a brief blog describing how I believe the current (conventional) content management systems (CMS) could be expanded to allow for managed, yet open scientific publishing. It basically introduces the need for two CMS extensions - (i) a referencing system (similar to EndNote/web), and (ii) a reputation-managed peer-review system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe blog is at: http://darrensmith.com.au/blog/index.php?itemid=17
I like the article as it is, though I find it more pro-openness than the headline implies. If the headline stays, then maybe antother voice from the dark side of the force is needed for balance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"[i]...everything goes online: experimental protocols, successful outcomes, failed attempts, even discussions of papers being prepared for publication...[/i]"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"[i]...It's those little details that become clear with open notebook...[/i]"
Are we not going to be submerged by this avalanche of details, data, preliminary results? Who manages to keep up even with the classical "science 1.0" literature? Who manages to keep up with the hundreds of blog RSS feeds? How can the relevant information be retrieved, aggregated and evaluated in this ocean of data?
This sounds to me as one of the major challenges for science 2.0 and may even call for a further (r)evolution towards science/web 3.0...
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Edited by Thomas Lemberger at 01/11/2008 1:24 AM
I feel this experiment in Science 2.0 is great for promoting general scientific literacy among the wider community.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe early efforts of the wider community might be a little crude but hopefully will inspire people to increase their science literacy in an effort to make more considered and thoughtful posts.
The Web is the creation of scientists, mostly physicists building html and browsers on top of what the computer guys did, So it's a little strange to start of saying "Science could be next."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's already standard for many scientists to put their draft papers on their web sites. This is a more plausible if less amazing practice than putting lab notebooks online. Why not build on that to build online journals that start from those drafts to produce well-refereed papers. I believe the AAAI has been doing this for a long time, Breaking the grip of the conventional journals is a project that has been underway for a long time.
The story of OpenWetWare is terrific, but I don't think it's the centerline of Science using the Web.
This whole argument reminds me of what you'd read in articles about Linux five to ten years ago. Open source was supposedly the future, and soon to replace Windows on the desktop. Well, the rest of the world outside of the enthusiasts couldn't be bothered. They had work to do, and didn't have the massive amounts of time required by such things (and the tools discussed here are huge time sinks). With the massive amount of literature out there, who has the time to look at pictures of some grad student's cat?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as the scooping argument, you're missing the point. Often it can take months, if not years, to realize the true significance of your data. I worked with a mouse mutant where it took us over a year to figure out the cause of death. Putting your raw data out, before you have figured it out thoroughly, is just asking for someone else to make that leap instead of you. Anyone remember Rosalind Franklin? What happened to her when someone else got to see her raw data?
What happened when someone got a look at Rosalind Franklin's raw data? The someones worked out what it meant way faster than she was managing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust one correction: the Science Blogging Conference was in Janauary, not April of 2007. And the 2nd conference is next week, January 18-19th, 2008.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> What happened when someone got a look at Rosalind
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> Franklin's raw data? The someones worked out what it
> meant way faster than she was managing.
And that's the scooping danger inherent here. It's not that someone is just going to replicate your work and your conclusions and try to publish them faster than you and claim credit for your work. The issue is, what if they are able to reach the eureka moment faster than you are? Are you okay with being the "dark lady of DNA" rather than the Nobel Prize winner? Are you willing to risk years of work this way, not to mention the graduation prospects of your students?
I believe that these new developments in science are extremely exciting and will lead to great things. However, it is also the case that the academic world is going to have to adapt to these new pressures. Complete openness is almost unthinkable in the current paradigm of academic life. I do not believe that the academic science world will be able to embrace complete openness, and this is not necessarily a problem. While it is good to share data and findings with our colleagues all across the world, there is also something to be said for the development of ones results into a (at least somewhat) cohesive and coherent whole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also believe that if we do such things as open our lab notebooks to the world, we begin to have the problem of "water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." It may be the case that by making so much information available (imagine millions of notebook pages with all the associated flotsam and jetsam) information that is actually valuable and useful will become harder to find. I do however believe (in the most general terms at least) in the publishing of raw data along with research reports. By opening raw data to analysis by others, the conclusions of investigators can be verified. This is an important first step in helping science become what it is moving towards.
It is a very exciting time to be a scientist, and I hope that more and more people will join the PLoS One and OpenWetWare communities, for instance. These communities are important first steps towards openness and collaboration in this new world of science.
As I wrote in a recent blog posting, in the online world one has to think about both reputation and attention. In the traditional print journal world, the only way to get attention was by first gaining reputation through publication. In the online world, I would argue particularly for young scientists, the amount of attention they can get (from search hits, incoming links, and others reading their blog postings and wiki entries) can be invaluable in finding collaborators, and in building an "online reputation". This means there is a challenging balancing act between waiting to gain reputation through traditional journal articles, versus taking a risk and being more open, and gaining both attention and reputation through the digital medium. In my experience (as a non-scientist), the opportunities opened up by blogging have been much greater than I could ever have imagined, and the responses are more rapid and more numerous than I get when I publish in a journal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo tools like this favor the dishonest? If someone deliberately withholds data, or posts artefactual results, then they have your data and their secret data, while you have your data and their possibly misleading artefactual data. Is it naive to expect everyone to play fair in an era of tight funding and multi-million dollar patents?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA colleague recently called a Drosophila lab to ask for a transgenic line of flies. When one publishes in a science journal, one signs an agreement that all reagents used in the published experiments will be made available to the scientific community, so results can be confirmed/replicated. This scientist, who I won't name here, had published several papers using this line of flies. He told the requester, "I'm the Derek Jeter of science, I don't need to bother with little people like you," and refused to send out the line of flies. Is someone like that likely to post his lab's unpublished data for all to see? Or is he more likely to hide his own data, and dig through yours?
The other obvious question not being asked here is how is this all going to be paid for? The last audit I saw of PLOS' finances was in Nature, and it showed them losing millions of dollars per year, with losses increasing in the future. While PLOS has claimed they're on pace to start breaking even at some point, I haven't seen any hard numbers to back this up. They stay in business because of huge grants that cover up their losses. What happens to any small society publisher that can't bring in huge grants? Has anyone been able to make a profit, or at least break even running an open access journal?
Here is an extended article about the Medicine 2.0 movement. http://scienceroll.com/medicine-20/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWanted to post a reply to this comment:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I also believe that if we do such things as open our lab notebooks to the world, we begin to have the problem of "water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." It may be the case that by making so much information available (imagine millions of notebook pages with all the associated flotsam and jetsam) information that is actually valuable and useful will become harder to find."
The "information overload" argument comes up frequently even with respect to less ambitious content then lab notebooks on OpenWetWare. My general take on it is that it's a much better problem to have than having a dearth of information. Also, there are lots of resources going after the problem of searching huge, diverse information sets (e.g. Google) so we get to ride that wave for free.
For open lab notebooks specifically, I think they'll provide an opportunity to move the publication process forward a couple years (generous estimate of time from project inception to publication). There is a huge amount of inefficiency built into a collaborative system that runs with a multi-year lag on knowing what other researchers are working on. Open lab notebooks are a stab at cutting the lag time.
OpenWetWare is currently rolling out new tools to make lab notebook sharing easier -- if you'd like to run the experiment on whether this helps at all, [url http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:How_to_join]please join up[/url] ;)
The concept of induction has been implemented for a long time; Electric motors. Why has it took so long to implement linear motors and why can't we do this with automobiles?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith regards to attitudes to openness, I would suggest to introduce a more strict distinction between the scientific research (1) process on one hand (methodologies, experimental setups, hypotheses) and (2) knowledge refined from documented observations (measurements) on the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, knowledge builds on cumulated knowledge. Thus, the strength of the 'intellectual construction' aimed at by the scientific process depends on the usage of maximally 'robust' prior knowledge. As a researcher, I need to pay attention to the premises or prior knowledge my conclusions build on. Data provenance and evidence are therefore central concerns. Another concern relates to context. Observations (for example measurements) have value in a given context, but not in just any context.
For the moment, I think collaborative tools can be used to share information about the scientific research process. However, they might not provide sufficient - or sufficiently easy - support for the knowledge building process, particularly with respect to (1) data provenance and evidence to support the primary knowledge building process of the scientific endeavor or (2) contextual background to observations. Thus, I might be concerned about how to correctly share my research with others, but also about using research shared by other scientists.
This is a general problem, as much of the scientific observations remain in computer readable form on local storage devices or in isolated data silos while a very minor part might be shared through natural language text in traditional publications. It is already clear that the traditional publications will not suffice to support the advancement of the scientific process and there are already high expectations on Web 2.0 / Science 2.0 technologies.
Ever heard of Psych 2.0? What is it with you people; didn't your mother teach not to steal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article gives a good overview of the state of Science 2.0. One aspect I do not find in the article is the increasing role of Google, Microsoft, Adobe and other Web 2.0 companies in science. Google Scholar, Windows Live Academic Search, Google Docs, Buzzword are just some of the tools that change the way scientific documents are created and shared.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've come in on this a bit late but overall this looks good and balanced. I have an interest in Open Notebook Science which was inspired by many of the people quoted and who have already commented.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome general comments: the discussion on the risks of 'being scooped' is almost always phrased negatively as has been done in this article. My perspective is that is mnore a case of risks and returns. The risk is that your ideas or data are 'stolen' but there are potential returns on more efficiently turning your results or ideas into peer reviewed research. The returns here are discussed at the end of the article rather than directly in context with the risks. I have written on this at;
http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2007/11/14/getting-scooped/
In terms of the payoff a good example may be the grant proposal we submitted in December. This was made possible by a large number of people aggregating very rapidly and collaborating on getting the proposal together. Details at;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/category/research-network-proposal-for-open-science/
Many of the comments raise the concern of 'information overload' if lab data becomes available. However the promise of '2.0' is automated and community filtering. Facebook and Amazon do a suprisingly good job of identifying people I know or books I am interested in. There are some tentative moves towards doing this for science but there is a long way to go. It is all about identifying and creating networks of people, data, and their connections. Web 2.0 tools are doing a good job of collating and using this information for very large communities. The challenge lies in building big enough scientific networks that we start to see these benefits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this is a concise and well balanced article which has attracted useful feedback.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Making anything new work requires a bit of 'risk-taking 'from everyone involved." is my 2 cents worth.
My instinct is that blogs and wikis are digital equivalents of the hallway conversation at a conference or the lab meeting, but are a long way from replacing journals. You don't get points for making the statement first about science unless you can prove that statement (otherwise we'd all set up random statement generators about signal transduction and wait for the nobels to flow).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWikis and blogs are great for teaching technique and method. They are not yet the place to make the statements on which one's career rests, unless of course one's career is as a blogger.
Also, the article might address the essentially non-digital character of much science. In life sciences other than synthetic biology, research depends on access to physical tools and machines. Having a blog is a poor substitute for lacking a cell line, laboratory, or animal model.
Got a lot more to say. But the arbitrary character limit is a problem here. Not very web 2.0 to limit comments!
Apologies for a double post, but the character limits stopped me last time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny article about web 2.0 and science should deal with intellectual property. The publisher use of copyright is a real problem here - see Shelly Batts getting a takedown notice for blogging a figure from a Wiley journal over the summer of 2007. And the publishers are attacking the NIH public access policy on copyright terms now as well.
Most modern technology tools that can be used in a web 2.0 context can be made illegal through copyright license restrictions. The article should address this very real risk.
Disclosure: I work for Creative Commons, and as such, I tend to see IP as an issue worth mentioning.
With the steep down-right combat between scientists, I think open blogging as a cooperative means in science might be difficult. However, outreach work within science have a better chance of becoming big in and by web 2.0.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll admit that perhaps I was overly pessimistic about the future of Science 2.0. It is true that advances in expert systems and data organization will help us to organize data such that extraordinary quantities of data can be instantaneously filtered to give us what we want--just look at Google. I would say however that the traditional process of asking a question, designing an experiment, interpreting the results, and distilling this into a (more or less) compact research report will never find itself obsolete. However, the data that informs the conclusions must be freely available. In addition, having ones lab notebook online will significantly improve the state of repeatability--it happens all too often that the Materials and Methods section is employed to throw ones competitors off the trail. This is entirely untenable and one of the main reasons why I so wholeheartedly support PLoS ONE as well as OpenWetWare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn research led universities research has been seen as an expert form of learning. We have been using blogs and wikis for supporting student learning for some time. Perhaps the time is right to see if what we have learnt is of value to the research community too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow are you going to be able to validate any material you receive?It seems that it would be real easy to slip in a lot of junk science. You are going to need a way to validate the info you obtain in this manner. Maury 1944
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists are human, both in the sense of being only human, so they screw up and become secretive, and in the sense of being social creatures and thus greater than the sum of the individuals. Surely good communication helps the human being feel good and prevents the screw ups spoiling the rest of their life....... especially since the screw ups cannot proliferate: they are open for all to see....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOpen scientific discussion is an interesting proposition. I believe a big challenge is to fundamentally change the way scientists communicate. Open communication must become the normal or SOP of scientists, then it will really work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience 2.0, particularly the use of wikis, transforms the reporting of scientific discover from a static (snapshot) process to a dynamic one. When dealing with scientific discovery a wiki is superior at capturing the process of investigation than traditional methods of information dissemination. In short, wikis provide an inclusive, ever expanding source of scientific knowledge which will have a dramatic effect on the publication of scientific findings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood article. I have a couple of minor suggestions:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) In your discussion of pre-print and other open repositories facilitating peer review, it might be worth mentioning the story of mathematician Grigori Perelman. He solved a famous problem, and only posted the proof to arXiv, an open repository for physics and mathematics. Other mathematicians were able to check his work, and he ended up winning a Fields medal. The story is here:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept06/library_arXiv.html
2) A small quibble: you begin your discussion of blogging by calling it "Web logging, or blogging," and it made me cringe a little. Nobody calls it "web logging." If you're concerned a reader won't know what blogs are, you could add a sentence of explanation.
"Are there certain aspects of a project that researchers should keep quite, at least until the paper is published?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is very mundane: quite should be "quiet."
Sorry my english is not the best..but take in mind:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa) The information of double way is communication, not simple "data" from the author to the readers.
b) Communication serve as the "vital " liquid circulating to keep alive the social body .
c) Science have to "descends" from the Olympus to the current persons to learn both how to save this planet ...
JorgePoveda
There are broader considerations. Whatever its evils, globalization can overthrow militarized nationalism, and bringing the world's scientists together as a single community - given that there will always be some internal snapping and snarling - provides another important bridge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJohn Woods
Re: Science 2.0
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisor Our Evolving Technocortex and the Event of Homo Cyber Novus:
I have just read the title of Science 2.0 and the few first lines, and I won't read the next 5 pages, since I already know that it will support my working hypothesis of thirty year, that we are presently evolving into a new species, while evolving an ECC (Electronic Collective Consciousness) having the power to develop a very high IPQ (Information Processing Quotient)
The problem with us, today, is that we are still using our mental ability for individual motives.
The working title of my thesis is E=MLC2 :
From Energy to Matter, to Life and Consciousness2 (Beyond)
The "square" of the C represents the need that we presently have to transcend our self-consciousness of reality.
AG 1.0
PS "We need to see ways to stop progress, for some time, and start using the knowledge that we have acquired to solve the problems that we have created, while acquiring it.
Perhaps you should change the title. Risk in being generous, open minded, humble, willing to help others with your knowledge ? Dont you have enough with your work ? At the death moment, would you be more satisfied with your bank account or with the knowledge you passed to others ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumankind has prospered because of cooperation. Its worst times were, are and will be due to selfishness.
It's interesting how much of the article refers to entrenched academic and organizational reward systems as constraints to doing science in this new way. An outward and interdisciplinary focus seems essentially healthy and provides an alternative to closed systems and political jockeying. Safeguarding privacy and being culturally sensitive do seem important. I had a friend who was a cancer patient and was horrified to find her doctor blogging about another patient she could identify. I don't think a blog post like her doctor's can be justified in the interest of science but there are not yet well developed shared norms for Science 2.0 whereas the norms for traditional processes are better established.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI beleive the objective of such an application/ discussion would be most beneficial if the mission was to tranform the palethra of information be bombarded each day into a discussion which clearly identifies what actions are necessary for a particular indivual's perspective. Then the discussion itself would become would offer great value in a practicle sense. For example, why not encourage the public to undergoe a daily ruotine of the so called "BRAIN EXCERCISES" and encourage them to provide feedback on the results. I think the act of discussing would provide a suprising level of value, even more so then the content. I am developing a simple application a long such lines; if this notion is going down the same path as Science 2.0, please contact me at jrpulicicchio@gmail.com . I would love to discuss how we can help eachother.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this a good example of why we must not let the internet be censored or controlled by any government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we have all come to a stage where we know that if we bring technology into anything that we want, then we have to face both the good and the bad circumstances associated with it. Setting up a blog, forum etc., after all is in our hands only, whatever the need might be. So we have to assess both the sides of the coin before going ahead with it. We need to be especially careful when it comes to science where we dont want too many views for our own good that might lead to jumbled thoughts or for that matter a total digression from the subject itself!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn interesting point is that the new communication era is unavoidable :-) I, for example have just posted my recent article in my blog without even thinking of going to the scientific journals
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://nettingno.blogspot.com/
I am resenting a course at the end of this month to scientists and engineers on witing for a wider audience. The title is "Write clearly - Write to be understood"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI should like to include the ideas of this article and welcome suggestions
Tony Greenfield
tony@greenfieldresearch.co.uk
I understand the way that this approach speeds up the science and publication process. However the plastic nature of the publication will make it very difficult to reference using the traditional referencing format. If each of the earlier edited versions of a Wiki are stored and never erased one would be able to tunnel back to the referenced version. In actuality in browsing examples in present Wikis I see a great deal of links to traditional web sites which do not include the rigorous version and backup safety provisions. This would argue for a pure Wiki implementation which may be a hard sell.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can see this being very useful for new techniques, but it will take longer to relax inherent controls on unpublished articles. Also, I think this will be more likely to be useful in medical procedures and possible treatments, rather than research or developments in new electronics or military devices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see some parallels with the book publication industry. There is a supplier (scientist or author), and a market (readers or other scientists/interested persons), and an exploiter (entities who leverage the work to make money). The market is opaque to the suppliers, and is made more opaque by the exploiters, who seek more and more control over both the market and the suppliers. This development serves to reduce the opacity. To a really deserving young scientist who is ahead of his peers, this is a better way of getting recognition than the traditional method, and therefore the cream should rise to the top.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a much better explanation of the publishing industry see Eric Flint's articles in Jim Baen's Universe magazine.
> Sorry my english is not the best..but take in mind:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> a) The information of double way is communication,
> not simple "data" from the author to the readers.
> b) Communication serve as the "vital " liquid
> circulating to keep alive the social body .
> c) Science have to "descends" from the Olympus to the
> current persons to learn both how to save this planet
> ...
> JorgePoveda
Gracias, Sr. Poveda. Your English is far better than my Spanish; I concur with your statements. The ivory towers of academia may tremble at the assaults of technology. The two-way street of the information "super highway" will keep progress moving. Rapid sharing of knowledge allows faster results from research since more minds may concern themselves with problems and solutions.
> I am [b]p[/b]resenting a course at the end of this month to
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> scientists and engineers on witing for a wider
> audience. The title is "Write clearly - Write to be
> understood"
> I should like to include the ideas of this article
> and welcome suggestions
>
> Tony Greenfield
> tony@greenfieldresearch.co.uk
Sorry, Tony, old-time editing habits. I'm not sure if there is any way to go back and edit posts for typos. Good luck on the presentation; as a former technical writer/editor I understand the problem.
As a web professional I would like to correct your usage of the term "web 2.0". This is a stupid buzz term invented by media hacks that didn't bother to do their research. The web has undergone a large number of major changes in use and functionality and version 2 was way back when text pages were allowed to use *gasp* pictures. If you want to eliminate purely technical issues then "web 2.0" was when web pages began to be used for entertainment, which was followed by the use for business. The web has been evolving for years and is well beyond version 2. Science has been evolving for millennia and I have no clue what version we would be on. Please stop using moronic buzz words in a publication that is supposed to be accurate and, well, scientific in nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAside from that I think that security at both the national and corporate levels will greatly hamper this "open" science. The naive idea that a date/time stamp would actually hold up in a court of law is pretty funny. It is so easy to alter the date/time stamp on files or database fields that that is one of the first things a hacker learns. Unless the entire set of records/data is backed up to a "hard" media like paper, it is vulnerable to destruction or alteration. These tools will likely be adopted in a closed environment but wide open sharing isn't viable with politics and technology as they currently exist.
Idealistically, Science 2.0 is an excellent concept, not only for sharing expertise among experts, but also for helping to better educate the more curious public, admittedly a small percentage of the total, in matters of science and technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRealistically, the concept will not be embraced by the status-conscious research power brokers in the well-endowed universities, by the profit-motivated CEOs of corporate research institutions, or by the funding granters of the present administration in Washington, given the administration's proclivities to delay or deny scientific advances deemed contrary to the conservative/evangelical ideology. With regard to the latter situation, I would recommend a disturbing read: Chris Mooney's "The Republican War on Science. "
The history of science and technology is full of stories of squabbles, lawsuits, and espionage, over discoveries and innovations. It would be good if more openness could bring an end to self-serving science and rather promote the sharing of scientific labor as well as the fruits. Science 2.0 has the potential. But, first, Science 1.0 has to undergo a major paradigm shift.
Interesting article, though Waldrop's arguments on 'risks' aren't all that convincing. However, there is much good and 'potentially useful' knowledge in the article and in the responses to it which could possibly become part of the 'wisdom of our species'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this[i][b]'Specie-al'wisdom[/b][/i], if I may coin a phrase, is something we are obviously in desperate need of, view the utter mess we humans as a species have been making of our planet's ability to support us humans and other species - hugely overconsuming as a species though the great majority of human beings are living on, what, less than US $ 3 or 4 per day?!!
It may now be far, far too late, alas, to change things around at this time though evidently the Internet and the worldwide web are certainly tools that could help us very significantly slow down our ongoing rush to disaster - developing 'wisdom' to help us perhaps climb our way out of the hole we are digging for ourselves. (Yes, I realize I'm madly mixing metaphors). I see few signs of any such interest or desire.
The problem with Waldrop's article (and the responses to it) is actually that everything here is in the [i][b]'wrong language'[/b][/i] to enable effective action to be taken. The article is in 'linear prose' as as all the responses to it (as is my response too). There are a huge number of practical things identified here that could serve as the basis of some truly effective action planning to accomplish some worthy Mission via 'Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies (that) could usher in a new era of science'.
But that could perhaps happen if and only if we are to graduate from this linear prose that we persist with to think about and discuss complex issues. However, to judge by what I've seen thus far, the comment at the end of the subtitle of the Waldrop piece ([i][b]"Or not"[/b][/i]) actually says it all. The proposed Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies will most likely accomplish very little indeed, and we shall continue fruitlessly arguing 'round and 'round the mulberry bush as we always have done - with little effective action on any global or societal issue, from global warming to overpopulation to resource depletion.
John N. Warfield, over a decades-long study of 'complexity in systems' has developed a way of looking at the 'relationships between factors' in complex system that can certainly help to enable us to see where we are in our systems with significantly enhanced clarity - we could come to understand how factors in the complex systems we are dealing with are inter-related and thereby we may be able to perform our thinking and our tasks in those systems with better effectiveness than we have been doing thus far. More information about Warfield's seminal contributions to systems science and 'systems design' is available at http://www.jnwarfield.com and at the 'John Warfield Collection' in the library of George Mason University: http://www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/warfield.htm.
Based on Warfield's contributions I've developed a powerful aid to problem-solving and decision making that I call the [b]'One Page Management System' ([i]OPMS[/i])[/b], which enables us to identify any ambitious (but feasible) Mission and then, from our own currently available ideas, develop effective Action Planning to accomplish the chosen Mission. More information about this tool is available on request to my email id at gs_chandy (at) yahoo (dot) com. A PowerPoint presentation and a couple of descriptive Word documents. For those interested and intrigued by my claims that it is possible always to develop enhanced wisdom on issues from the existing state of knowledge I can make freely available the prototype software realizing the [b][i]OPMS[/i][/b], along with some (limited) guidance on how to use it and how to interpret models created, and so on.
---GSC
--
Edited by gs_chandy at 01/17/2008 6:49 AM
> Corvus,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> It is not possible to control or even predict how
> information will be used. There is nothing stopping
> anyone from walking into a library and learning how
> to do any published experiment. Authors make no
> warranties about their findings - they report the
> truth as best they can. Sometimes warnings are
> printed for obviously dangerous protocols (e.g. when
> explosive compounds are used) but that is unusual.
> What we're trying to do with Open Notebook Science
> e is report more quickly, as we learn.
Speaking as the author, I have to apologize for coming so late to this party; I've been sidelined by combination of travel and bronchitis.
Jean-Claude, I agree that researchers should be as open as possible; trying to protect people from 'dangerous' knowledge is a very slippery slope. But is openness an absolute? Aren't there some kinds of information that should be kept confidential? What about protecting, say, the privacy of human subjects--or the safety of an anthropologist's informants, who could be subject to reprisals if their identity were known?
More generally, is it possible to lay down criteria for when research information should be open, and when it shouldn't?
Mitch
> I believe that the concept of Science 2.0 is
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> perfectly viable as long as a framework exists for
> incorporating one of the big positives for the
> current journal system - peer review.
> I actually had an idea in this area a few months back
> (spontaneous and personal scientific publishing) and
> determined that a need existed for a Reputation
> Management system. That is, a central database
> responsible for tracking the reputation of those
> participating in the 'Science 2.0' community.
> Whenever a blog is posted or an article uploaded to
> an open scientific database, the article may be
> registered with a peer review system. Members of the
> system may review the article and rate it, and the
> weighting of their rating would be determined by
> their reputation in the 'Rep management system'. As
> those articles rated by them become rated by others
> with high reputations this could act to increase
> their own rep, in a kind of feedback system.
> Referencing should also remain a strict priority in
> all such 'blogs'.
Thanks Darren.
What you're describing sounds a lot like social bookmarking, a la Digg or del.icio.us. I believe there are a number of experiments underway to test this kind of 'open peer review.' But doesn't that put your reputation at the mercy of whoever feels moved to comment (as opposed to researchers who have been given a responsibility to do so)? Also, what happens if [i]nobody[/i] comments on your article?
Mitch
Web 2.0 Buzz. Agreed that it's a convenient 'hook'. Certainly it neither describes the technical version of 'Web' (currently at HTML 5 and XHTML 1.0) nor does it even address the functional 'widgets' (another convenient hook I like), such as blogs, wikis, etc., which Tim says have been around awhile.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web."
However, it is a hook or buzz that is convenient shorthand for the much more complex concept. We have many of these in science and other pursuits of knowledge. I have been coding HTML since 1.0, and when I was first exposed to the Web 2.0 'term' at a web conference in Atlanta in 2006, it struck a chord.
References:
w3.org - http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/
wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
wikiversity - http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Web_2.0
--
Edited by grinbear at 01/17/2008 9:17 AM
Science 2.0 is an excellent article as an ongoing discussion of the struggle to use current technology and communications models to assist in knowldege management. I think the important concept here is to consider the granularity of the web tools available and to choose which ones to use, based on the specifications of the project you are pursuing. We certainly would not necessarily put our latest proprietary project out on wikipedia. Another aspect is the maturity of the web and how we can use identity management to control access to our information, and provide some validity to the comments or collaborators. Anonymous comments are a risk, perhaps, but not as risky as not knowing if our collaborators are who they say they are. We must also remember that the Internet itself was started by the science community as a open system, as was the Unix OS. Of necessity, layers of authentication have been added to those as they matured over the years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFunklord, your post (12 Jan) makes an excellent point about the dangers of unscrupulous researchers. But they exist already, as your drosophila anecdote illustrates. And their behavior is policed (albeit imperfectly) by the same kind of social controls that keep (most of) us behaving with reasonable decency toward one another in daily life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo here's the question: would putting everything out in the open, a la Science 2.0, strengthen or weaken those social controls? How many people are willing to be a jerk if the evidence is online for the whole world to see--permanently?
Mitch
> Many of the comments raise the concern of
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> 'information overload' if lab data becomes available.
> However the promise of '2.0' is automated and
> community filtering. Facebook and Amazon do a
> suprisingly good job of identifying people I know or
> books I am interested in. There are some tentative
> moves towards doing this for science but there is a
> long way to go. It is all about identifying and
> creating networks of people, data, and their
> connections. Web 2.0 tools are doing a good job of
> collating and using this information for very large
> communities. The challenge lies in building big
> enough scientific networks that we start to see these
> benefits.
An excellent idea, Cameron! Is OpenWetWare (or anyone else) experimenting with this kind of system?
John,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe points made in both your posts (14 Jan) are very well taken. In particular, your analogy with hallway conversation is dead on: that kind of informal communication is critically important to the conduct of science, and can be greatly facilitated by wikis, blogs and such. But by themselves, these tools will NOT replace formal publications.
Regarding IPR--I could make the usual excuses about lack of space, and the difficulty of doing justice to a very complex issue in just a few words. But the bottom line is, you're right. The article should at least have a mention of the subject.
> And their behavior is policed (albeit
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> imperfectly) by the same kind of social controls that
> keep (most of) us behaving with reasonable decency
> toward one another in daily life.
In reality, their behavior is not policed at all. Journals do not enforce their policies on providing reagents, and this particular researcher is a rising star in his field.
>
> So here's the question: would putting everything out
> in the open, a la Science 2.0, strengthen or weaken
> those social controls? How many people are willing to
> be a jerk if the evidence is online for the whole
> world to see--permanently?
But you're assuming that everyone would buy into the system and that everything would be transparent. How would you know if someone was holding back data, or if they suddenly discovered it right before they published it? And if you are the person asking for the flies in this case, are you willing to go on the record publicly calling out someone with more power than you, someone much better connected than you in the field? Are you willing to write off potential opportunities by doing so?
The whole thing smacks of naivete and while it is very noble, it ignores human nature.
@ mmwaldrop
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>> However the promise of '2.0' is automated and
>> community filtering. Facebook and Amazon do a
>> suprisingly good job of identifying people I know or
>> books I am interested in.
> An excellent idea, Cameron! Is OpenWetWare (or anyone else) > experimenting with this kind of system?
I don't think it is being done on OWW because it is a pretty hefty development problem but efforts like Connotea, Nature Networks, BioMedExperts are moving in this general direction. However we are a long way from;
'Cameron Neylon: We have recomendations for you with ## papers, ## new structures, and new experimental data from ## labs'
or
'You searched for DNA replication in E. coli. Other people who searched for this also downloaded these ## papers, ## structures, and looked at ## experimental data.
One of the problems we have in this area is that we are a relatively small market, and most of the exciting tools are being driven by startups who need to tap large markets to make back their VC capital or generate large potential advertising revenue. I live in hope that Google or Microsoft will turn around and see value in serving an academic market and, ideally, working with us and forward thinking publishers to help integrate and adapt the existing tools to make them more applicable to our relatively small marketplace.
The original idea I described was introduced by Neil Saunders and Deepak Singh has blogged quite a bit on some of these general principles.
--
Edited by Cameron Neylon at 01/19/2008 3:00 AM
--
Edited by Cameron Neylon at 01/19/2008 3:00 AM
--
Edited by Cameron Neylon at 01/19/2008 3:25 AM
> > So here's the question: would putting everything
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> > out in the open, a la Science 2.0, strengthen or
I think there is a danger in coflating the tools that allow us to share data, comments, information, in a controlled way (a la Web 2.0) and the philosophical positions that we should, as scientists, be completely open.
For those of us who believe in Open Science (which is as undefinable as Web 2.0) the tools are necessary. However these same tools can be used effectively in an environment where permissions are strictly controlled (e.g. Facebook, at least in principle). Sharing is not the same as being Open.
Both can provide real benefits. My personal belief is that being Open has more benefits but tools that enable sharing within a defined community is still valuable. I think one of the good things about the Open Science community is that we are early adopters of these tools because we are not really fussed about whether the security works. Even if we all go to the wall these tools will be useful to people in closed and semi-open communities.
--
Edited by Cameron Neylon at 01/19/2008 3:26 AM
Openess and collaboration in the age of Web 2.0 has many implications, but among the most important issues I see are 1) digital preservation and "citability" of Internet material, and 2) proper attribution.
On [b]archiving [/b]issues I have written in my blog (Eysenbach, Gunther. The paradox of the current state of scholarly communication in the age of Web 2.0 Posted at http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/ Jan 18, 2008. Archived at http://www.webcitation.org/5Ux2jEb70) about the paradox that 1) blogs (and other Internet venues such as wikis) are - at least in theory - important venues for scholarship to publish hypotheses, opinions, analyses etc. outside of the traditional journal publishing system 2) yet, they are not considered "citable" or "publications" - which in turn affects their use, usefulness, and acceptance among researchers as tools for scholalry communication. Luckily, a solution to this exists, called WebCite (http://www.webcitation.org), a system which is live since 2005. It is part of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (consisting of libraries and Internet archives), and is used by publishers like BiomedCentral and over 200 journals to routinely archive and digitally preserve cited non-journal Internet material. Simply put, WebCite aims to make Internet material (any sort of digital objects such as blog posts, wikis, etc., except traditional journal articles, for which various archiving mechanisms already exist) more "citable", long-term accessible, and hence more acceptable for scholarly purposes. Without WebCite, Internet citations are deemed ephemeral and therefore are often frowned upon by authors and editors. "Link rot" almost guarantees that any cited URL goes 404 after a few years or decades, erasing the scholarly record. However, it does not make much sense to ignore opinions, ideas, draft papers, or data published on the Internet (including wikis and blogs), not acknowledging them only because they are not "formally" published, and because they are difficult to cite. Authors, editors, and publishers should support and adopt such a system to "WebCite" (archive) non-journal Internet material in their scholarly work, ensuring long term accessibility of the scholarly record..
On [b]attribution[/b], I've written a short letter in the BMJ in 2001 entitled "[url http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7305/166]Code of conduct is needed for publishing raw data[/url]", and I still feel the issue needs to be addressed. I wrote: "If researcher A laid open the complete dataset, and researcher B discovers a new relation or other "publishable" results in the dataset, what rights of first publication does researcher A have? Researcher B could probably publish new discoveries with a simple reference to the open source---which may be unsatisfactory for researcher A, especially if he or she planned to do further analyses with the dataset. We may need a more clear code of practice on this issue. In the open source software industry, everybody who amends open source code to produce more advanced software agrees that the new software must be open source again, a practice that could be analogously applied in biomedical publishing. Also, one may encourage a practice where authors who made available the original raw data (and also subsequent authors who generated more results with these data) should be invited to act as co-authors in any subsequent publications. This prospect may enhance the willingness of researchers to open their raw data in the first place." (Eysenbach G. [url http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7305/166]BMJ 2001;323:166 ( 21 July )[/url]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe internet makes it possible for people to collaborate. It has caused serious changes in the general culture because it was designed as a research tool. The daily usage of the internet makes it possible to do much better thinking on important issues and this has caused the general public to actually get a whole lot smarter and make better decisions which has lead to major changes like people losing the need for a priest class. The science priest class is represented in the classic publication system and the corporate and University system are quite often way behind in areas like technology. I read the books necessary for a computer science degree from the University of Illinois back in the middle 80's and in spite of being one of the most advanced schools in computer science they were at least two to three years out of date on their technology thinking. The university system is not broke, just in need of Science 2.0 practices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe machine connections between us are accelerating in both speed and bandwidth. Just about the only prediction George Dyson makes in his history of human's machines, Darwin Among The Machines, is that when we can move data faster than we can individually process data then we will no long be individuals, we will become cells of a larger awareness. Instead of asking will Science 2.0 happen and work we should be asking what is Science 3.0? Or more to the point what is Human 2.0?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by jaysaul at 01/24/2008 8:35 AM
Excellent points, ScienceEditor--and excellent suggestions for dealing (or beginning to deal) with the problems.
As I mention in the article, albeit all too briefly, credit-assignment is the critical problem for Science 2.0...
Mitch
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not a scientist, but I think this is great! As a librarian, anytime people can engage information it is a benefit for science. I support colloborative science as it is more efficient for society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased on the first four comments, Open Science would also be welcoming Spam Science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI appreciate this artical very much. I have seen a point for sharing from this artical. However, I have also seen the statement that Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. your remark was contradictory to the truth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think some history and philosophy of science would improve the article. You could mention, specifically, Sir Francis Bacon (not the painter). His works ("The New Atlantis", "The Advancement of Learning", "Novum Organum" etc.) set the scene for the scientific method - especially with regards to scientific communication. Bacon, for example, inspired the creation of the Royal Society and was very much for open source science that would allow peer-review (both pre- and post-publication) and thus counteract human irrationality (he called them the four "idols" - http://www.sirbacon.org/links/4idols.htm).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect Bacon would have been in favor of Science 2.0 and some of what he had to say may still be relevant to it.
Chris,
Your are quite right: I was referring to the 2006 experiment, not to Nature precedings.
Mitch
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Mitch,
Thanks for writing the article. It is great that SciAm is promoting this kind of thinking in the community.
Let me first note that you are not really talking about "Science" but about a subset of scientific publishing and communication. That is of course very important, but there is a lot more to the overal practice of science, as enabled by computation and information technology. A small, but growing subset of the academic community has been thinking about this and doing a lot of work for some years now, but really, the revolution (sigh...) is just starting. Google "e-science" or visit the NSF OCI and CISE websites and look at the reports linked there.
Web 2.0 (and the future cliches to follow) technologies can certainly be very useful in enhancing and transforming the way we preserve and communicate (and perhaps even create) knowledge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks George! Glad you liked it.
You're quite right that there is a LOT more to this subject that I could deal with here. Here's hoping that it will inspire readers to explore further...
Mitch
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA comment emailed to me from a reader who wished to remain anonymous:
"The one area, which you touch on, and which I think is most important, is the dissemination to the general public as to what science is, how it is executed and most importantly how it impacts society in general and more explicitly an individual’s personal well being. This latter is most important since, unlike the quarterly mentality that drives some much of our society, the time constant of science is so long that society has no idea of the causal relationship of science and the expenditures to support that science of decades ago being responsible for the multiplicity of processes, and material things and instruments that make our lives as rich as they are today. And of course the equivalent statement that expenditures to support science today, may not affect their lives, but surely will have an impact on the lives of their children and grandchildren, and on the security of our way of life in the future."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMitch:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA great article on an important topic.
I'd like to emphasize that Science 2.0 should (indeed, must) be about more than sharing --it should also address sharing software, and making it easy for people to write software that analyzes other people's data. I discussed this idea in an article in Science: http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/~foster/science-2005.htm a couple of years ago.
Here, by the way, is a talk that discusses Science 2.0: http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/~foster/Talks/060512%20Geoinformatics%20Foster.ppt.
Regards -- Ian Foster.
We have to accetpt this new "Greek cultural freedom on searching and forming knowledge fractions": that is to say the greek philosophers hadn't any dogma to follow, and they had their freedom to dicover new things and knowledge, and then had the freedom, dignity and the resposiblity to defend the discoverd truth and towards the community they lived. Man should be free to understand the world around him with a great responsiblity. We are already there and now we have to follow our consciusness to do what is right according to universal values, such as not to kill, harm etc. It is our time to continue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience 2.0 is an excellent idea if scientific levels are high enough.But for those less developed areas, research results are not so satisfying. Thus,science 2.0 may provide a platform for plagiarism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an excellent article. Perhaps in another contribution you can explore the importance of the open source movement as it relates to the publication of scientific information. The traditional "publish in the most prestigious (and expensive commercial) journals" is limiting access to information as more scientists and libraries cut subscriptions due to outrageous prices. I would like to see one prestigeous scientist publish an important research paper directly on the web and see the reaction from the scientific community. :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've put a lot of time into examining the new technologies and speaking with scientists about why they're not using them. I recently gave a talk on the subject to the American Association of Publishers' Professional and Scientific Publishing meeting detailing what I've figured out, why things aren't working and suggestions as to how to improve tools that are being offered:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.cshblogs.org/cshprotocols/2008/02/14/why-web-20-is-failing-in-biology/
Wish u the best and not to stop at fear;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe all know that fear is the first thing to deal with - within ourselves mostly- & it goes on to clarity, which becomes the next thing to deal with, overcome, to then be able to reach understanding and the possibility to do something with it, not the ability yet; & following the process and gaining the inkling to do something with the knowledge, we are then to deal with the question of time, which possibly is now being addressed with this experiment...
But all this is only a tool as well as a first step toward any & everything, no? & as any tool it will do what we will it to... no? So, best wishes, say I.
Wish u the best and not to stop at fear;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe all know that fear is the first thing to deal with - within ourselves mostly-, & it goes on to clarity, which becomes the next thing to deal with, overcome, to then be able to reach understanding and the possibility to do something with it, not the ability yet; & following the process and gaining the inkling to do something with the knowledge, we are then to deal with the question of time, which possibly is now being addressed with this experiment...
But all this is only a tool as well as a first step toward any & everything, & as any tool it will do what we will it to... no?
-Uh or actually can, _allowed to, I mean_ :-) no?-
So, best wishes, say I.
[i][b]Fascinating[/b][/i] article by M. Mitchell Waldrop - potentially this could be a very fruitful initiative by Scientific American - most productive for the growth and development of the 'scientific culture'! However, I fear that unless SciAm is willing to go a bit further, this laudable initiative will go precisely nowhere. Below, I try to articulate in brief why this is likely to be the case, unless SciAm is willing to 'go the extra mile', so to speak.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere are some 'elements', generated from just a few of the issues raised by the article [i][b]"Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?":[/b][/i]:
1) To describe how researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science
1a) To develop a model of how 'Science 2.0' could develop a new paradigm of 'open notebooks'
2) To develop a truly different way of doing science, using the Internet tools available and under development
3) To enable SciAm readers to post their views on the issues articulated
4) To integrate the views of SciAm readers into the final article as developed
5) To invite SciAm readers to contribute their points of view on reading the article
6) To encourage readers to contribute their points of view
7) To provide hints to the readers as to how they might contribute
8) To make Science much more productive
9) To use Web 2.0
10) To ensure that speaking out on the web does not hurt the careers of young scientists
10a) To develop effective systems that would accomplish No. 10 effectively
10b) To put into place effective systems that would ensure that responsibly speaking out on the Internet would not cause damage to young scientists
11) To explore 'Opennotebook Science'
12) To develop Web 2.0 so that it adequately responds to the need for confidentiality and security of certain aspects of scientists work
13) To explore whether the aim expressed at No. 12 is possible at all
14) To disseminate the 'HOW's and 'WHY's of scientific issues more effectively to all scientists
15) To develop effective ways of publishing science and science discoveries
16) To ensure that the originators of ideas do not lose out because they have been generous with exposing their ideas
17) To demonstrate the significant increase in productivity of scientists that would develop with this scheme
18) ...
There are scores - even hundreds - of such elements that could be articulated from the issues that have been raised. In the list above, I have taken only some of the issues and only from the main article itself.
What we have to do is in order to understand effectively the system in which we are working is to [i][b]'integrate'[/b][/i] the various issues that arise.
Such integration is relatively easily done through[b] 'Interpretive Structural Modeling' ([i]ISM[/i][/b]). [i][b] ISM[/b][/i] is a powerful modeling tool invented by Professor John N. Warfield during his decades-long research into [i]'system complexity'.[/i] In brief, ISM enables the construction of models showing perceptions (by people in the system) of how factors in a system are seen to be linked to each other via appropriate [i][b]'transitive relationships'[/b][/i]. In the case of elements describing aims such as listed, the appropriate transitive relationship would be [i][b]contributes to[/b][/i].
The 'transitivity' of relationships as noted above is crucial - and we shall need effective means to visually show the models that are created through consideration of such transitive relationships in systems.
Unfortunately, the facilities that SciAm has available here do not enable the display of the graphical models that develop showing [i][b]contribution[/b][/i]. I am also unable, alas, to attach a model that is easily created.
I claim arriving at an effective understanding of how such factors as listed above (elements in the 'system') my [i][b]contribute to[/b][/i] each other would signficantly enhance the clarity with which we perceive and understand the whole system - and it also would show us how to proceed in order to accomplish specific goals in the system, for instance: [b]"How to ensure that speaking out on the web does not hurt the careers of young scientists"[/b].
Can SciAm make such needed facilities available?
--- GSC
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Edited by gs_chandy at 02/22/2008 3:50 AM
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Edited by gs_chandy at 02/22/2008 3:51 AM
My first thought was. NO WAY am I making my scientific ruminations public property, I've learned over the years that this is a sure way to have those ideas appear in someone else's work! However, as I read the article many practical and useful applications came to mind. For example it would be wonderful to have scientists that work in a very specific area share recent papers they have come across and studies they have heard about and in general terms share what they are working on or collaborations they would like to initiate. Another use would be for
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNPOs for example, to get the word out about their focus and successes and to also shape their goals and direction by getting feedback. I was sceptical of the IPod, I mean, who really needed one, right? Another new technology...what would I do with my pile of the CDs? Well, now I have four, yes, FOUR IPods!!!
In the 1950s I noted that engineers were far more communicative at meetings than chemists. For example, Bell Labs, GE Research, etc. published far more than duPont. I felt, at the time, that this would result in more rapid advances in electronics than in chemistry. I think that was correct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour article describes a great expansion of communications over that at technical and scientific meetings. I hope it works out.
Unfortunately, our society glorifies "the bottom line" far more than improvement in society. Judging by the interest in "hope" as shown by activity in today's primary elections by students and recent graduates, maybe this situation will improve.
Dan Weinberg, Ph.D.
danw@ieee.org
I think this is great as long as there is some kind of "firewall" that everybody understands between the speculative give and take on theoretical or methodological issues, and the hardcore data gathering and replication of results that give science its explanatory rigor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI came up with a concrete example of how web 2.0 might be useful the other day. I'm not a biologist but a chemist, but I found myself musing on dinosaur evolution. It occurred to me that if some dinosaurs were warm blooded, they would have had to have sex chromosomes as they could not reply upon a temperature dependent sex-determination mechanism as crocodiles do. I then wondered if I had been the first person to think of the link between warm-bloodedness and sex chromosomes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs it happens, I wasn't - there is plenty of material about this on the Web anyway - but what if I was? Maybe lots of other intelligent laypeople have good ideas that never see the light of day. Wouldn't Web 2.0 help with this?
Science 2.0 will open science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we will first see a convergence between the old paper-oriented science and web 2.0 tools to support social networking and open reviewing of electronic papers.
Later, when scientists adapt to a more collaborative paradigm and free themselves from the idea of possession of scientific knowledge in the form of papers, wiki-like tools will dominate, solving many inefficiencies in science's current production model.
More on this can be found in my posts:
Social Networks for Paper-Oriented Science
WikiScience
It must also be noted that what will come out of all these tools will hopefully be a solution to the increasing corruption of the paper-oriented scientific model, as well-summarized in, for example, David Lorge Parnas' article "Stop the Numbers Game" in Comm. of ACM,Nov.2007.
The internet is likely to change the way scientific research is conducted in innumerable ways. Some other grad students and I are working on some web-based tools to get the ball rolling. I encourage anyone interested in new methods for the organization and sharing of information between scientists to check out our site at http://www.labmeeting.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI strongly suggest you look into research on agoric systems from the early 00s. The SOA architecture provides mechanisms for verification, trust relationships and so on that could be utilized in the verification and acceptance of hypotheses by social networks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgoric systems are those that embody contracts in software.
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Edited by jabailo at 03/05/2008 10:53 AM
In the field of medicine and biomedical research we are equally fascinated by the prospect of Science 2.0 and we are going to host a conference this year (Sept 4-5th in Toronto) called Medicine 2.0 (http://www.medicine20congress.com), which will explore some of these aspects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/2008/03/medicine-20-congress-website-launched.html for considerations about the scope of Medicine 2.0, which will include Science 2.0...
My field is philosophy of education. I am intrigued but somewhat cautious. I have been studying what may be an educators' equivalent to a mathematician's zero for a number of years. My latest conclusion is that openness, and in particular, openness to present experience including spontaneity, are an educators' equivalent to a mathematician's zero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find "letting go" of preconceptions and prejudices to be very helpful. As Albert Einstein said: education " is that which helps someone think what can't be found in textbooks." Einstein also said: "Is it any wonder that the modern methods of instruction had not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry, for this delicate little plant, besides stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom.
For all of my ideas about openness being the educators' equivalent to a mathematician's zero, I find myself somewhat closed to sharing. Part of this may arise because I am 75 years old.
I am not a scientist. I am a professional writer. I know from my experience in the corporate world that when you put out a document for editing and comments, you are likely to get contradicting information. Then it is up to me as the writer to make an informed judgment call about what to accept and reject. The input is usually helpful and sometimes provides new insights. But many times the confusion clouds the original message. Also, comments are often about minutiae instead of being substantive. There is always a great value in a variety of opinions, but someone has to take the authority and make the final call, in my opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI admire the young for their enthusiasm and sense of fair play indicated in the first few comments, but I fear for them if they believe Web 2.0 will allow them to research effectively. The university campus is no longer "collegial" and radical anyones feel it is their duty to stop any new information developed that would interfere with their (and their vision of your) world view. Medicine affected by race, science affected by gender, or disease proliferation by sexual preference are just recent examples of public attempts to stifle inquiry. I am reminded of Kinseyian research in the middle of last century. What would we know publicly if the "public" had been able to identify, locate and affect Kinsey's group during the formative research. Outside commentary is fine after the data is gathered but stultifying and possibly deadly before
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI should like to make a mention of a physics wiki called SklogWiki. (www.sklogwiki.org), directed towards thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of complex liquids. It is slowly gaining interest, however, contributions are few and far between. There certainly seems to exist some form of 'activation barrier' before established scientists decide to make a contribution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe work on developing a high quality ontological framework for nano- and converging sciences and technologies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have implemented an analytic classification engine and system for tracing the evolution and dependencies of ideas, 'the creative process', within a certain subject domain.
In order for somebody to obtain a patent they must have an invention that is industrially applicable. This means that results from research that is only usable as the starting point of more research cannot be protected through a patent. In other words, only the person who makes the final step towards something that is practically usable can obtain the protection of a patent and derive revenue therefrom. Those who performed the basic research that made the invention possible receives nothing.
We create a framework within which people can be rewarded for basic results even if they are not industrially applicable. This is done through a database of publications and a system for analyzing the content of the publications in order to determine originality and dependence. A publication contains a description of some advancement in research or technology, and the system will determine to which extent the publication depends on earlier publications.
Together with leading technical universities, research institutes and industry we undertake an international cooperation in the field of knowledge sharing and cooperative industrial technology development for innovation financing in nano- and converging technologies. This is made possible via new methods for ontology-based intellectual property rights for nano- and converging sciences and technologies.
Should anyone involved in academic or industrial R&D in nano- and converging sciences and technologies, or organizations developing "science 2.0" systems be interested in collaboration, please contact us / read more about our work on http://www.nqcg.com
It seems to me the only risk is to certain self important types who never had an original thought in their lives may be exposed as such. This is a great example of how the internet will completely transform certain aspects of human endeavour. Although the 20th century has seen a blossoming of science, it has also created a world where most people don't feel part of this exciting and vital human activity. In Victorian times for instance many gifted amateurs made significant contributions to scientific knowledge. In the 20th century the convention arose that only those with a PhD who are actively publishing can be considered scientists and therefore qualified to opine on scientific matters. However studies have shown that this situation leads to vast amounts of virtually worthless research filling the pages of the myriad journals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI understand the need for rigour in the peer reviewing process, but the ultimate test of science is "does it work?"
Original thinkers with a strong sense of curiosity about the natural world and a willingness to practice sound scientific technique have nothing to fear here.
it scares me with 'too many cooks in the kitchen' - but this technical communication is here to stay and evolve - the safeguards for abuse should be paramount
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis represents a significant shift in scientific research, creating the opportunity for more collaboration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a major opportunity for public policy to create open national databases, that include all federally-supported clinical research, for rapid learning. This strategy would build on the extraordinary successes of the Human Genome Project and HapMap model for rapid-learning. We need a real evidence base for clinical science, not just summary data analyses in published journals. Under the current system, NIH-funded researchers hold onto their own databases; however, there is a very important "economics of the commons" - if all researchers contribute their data to a central database, each will give up his/her own data but will receive back many-fold from access to what other researchers have developed. But these arrangements don't come about through the marketplace; they need government encouragement. See discussions in 2/28/08 IOM workshop on data as a public utility, www.iom.edu/ebm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen experts are asked to give depositions in trials, their past writings are carefully scrutinized by attorneys presumably to point out inconsistencies between what they say in the deposition and what they have said in the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOpen science would seem to make that situation even worse, prompting lawyers to ask - if you believed that then and it turned out to be wrong, why should we believe that what you are saying now is right?!
Is there a method for organizing all the information orginating in the general scientific community for example that going to web 2.0. I suggest that a method somewhat similar to the US Post Office zip code system might be useful. I have some more suggestions about this. My Email address is gillishjg@aol.com. Please put the phrase 2.0 in the subject line of any email to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRespectfully, HerbSPGR
Is there a method for organizing all the information orginating in the general scientific community for example that going to web 2.0. I suggest that a method somewhat similar to the US Post Office zip code system might be useful. I have some more suggestions about this. My Email address is gillishjg@aol.com. Please put the phrase 2.0 in the subject line of any email to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRespectfully, HerbSPGR
nmrwiki.org - "magnetic resonance unchained"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA wiki site for the community of scientists working in the fields of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Electron Paramagnetic Resonance and Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
May I suggest that trial and error is accepted as a way that science uses to progress. This to some extent is true in any field.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will be happy to discuss,if it is ok.Now I have no smart comment,I have to sleep.I will be more than proud,as a participant.Good night and will see ....a better future,a better WEB.thank phil
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm really happy finding this article. Competion may enhances the effeciency up to a certain point, but if the submission of a paper is the only thing I'm working on, without being open for new ideas and aspects of a theme the efficiency gets lost.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA very important aspect of open cooperation is discussing experiments that failed. Here I see a great chance in an open lab notebook. A lot of time and money and other resources are spend by doing experiments another group already tried and failed. So, I think it is an important way to open the labs especially in the case of fields which needs fast results like cancer or HIV research.
This is a great start, but I want to really EDIT this article, for ex, adding links to sources mentioned. See my Medscape editorial for a Wikipedia variant for medicine at
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/520070 for more thoughts on this.
The article brings up a lot of risks and benefits which sharing information can have. Web 2.0 tools will make a difference in the world of science, but people will still possibly rely on other journals which might be considered more accurate. This movement will probably evolve slowly, because people do mistrust one another when it comes to publishing their work. Overtime, posting your information on a blog or a wiki will seem like the natural thing to do. For the moment, scientists are still getting used to this great new tool.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is truly a reflection of the modern methods of scientific research, and as everything in the world today, science will have to modernize along with time. Of course there are drawbacks to this method of publicizing research and until these glitches are dealt with I'm not sure everyone can fully accept it. However, there is no denying that this new "wiki" revolution has so many advantages, especially in allowing researchers to collaborate and work together to advance the real cause behind scientific research---saving the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article itself is a very good article, and there is a lot of truth in it. I think that these new Web 2.0 tools are for the benefit of the people. This will allow our community to engage in more social activities which will open up new doors for many. While there are many risks to things such as these, it is important to open up and share one's ideas with the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article is good and covers the main issues. It would be interesting to read the research paper with a huge acknowledgment page just because so many ideas were bounced around and thought out by more than just your immediate colleagues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho doesn't like having huge pools of information waiting to be sifted through that could potentially yield an answer to a question or just yield insight on a multitude of topics? Having more information at one's finger tips is usually able to increase the productivity of those that WANT to work/utilize the information. Its always interesting to see what you know and don't know in a different view. Anything could be that much needed spark to a research team and information pooling and critiquing from other researchers and the average Joe is always something to look forward to.
* This Open Science movement can evolve by having more researchers, new and old join the movement and share what they can/want. Possibly even collaborate between continental boarders making new friendships and research partners.
I am worried about my idea(s) getting scooped, which is why I wouldn't post every single portion of the research, only fragments of it, but enough to get the desired result. Now if the onlookers would like to know more, I'd be happy to inform them as long as I can trust them to give credit where it is due. Now, I don't have any first hand knowledge of having my work scooped, which is why i am scared of it possibly happening. Currently, I am just starting my journey to becoming a researcher / engineer.
One can ruin one's career by doing anything, One would risk one's career in a wiki by creating intentional false reports or stealing information and not giving credit where credit is due. Doing anything to cause harm in any way to the community is always frowned upon, and will harm one's reputation therefore career. Open notebook science is a good idea, but I would advise caution. Don't tell everything at first chance, just enough to cause discussion(s). One should have at least some portion of the research completed, then publish a page about one's work . Nothing too detailed until you are satisfied with it, and then see what others think about it. As long as people are honest and don't try to falsify anything intentionally, having one's work open for others to critique can lead to new ideas and improve the research even quicker than not sharing a portion of one's research. Who knows, it might even spark a whole new tangent to said research or to some other field.
Good article. Now for the answers to the questions you provided
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this* I think the very idea that scientists are finding new places to publish their research or just ideas for other people to read and comment on is great. It opens up one's work to people who might be doing something that might help one's work, or provide answers to questions asked. Think of this; wouldn't it be nice to talk to a fresh person, about a topic you know a lot about and be asked a question that provokes serious thought and then implementing it into the next portion of one's research? Information at one's finger tip is almost always welcome because it reduces the amount of searching one has to do to one blog or site.
* This movement might just make people who don't know a whole lot of what researchers do understand what they do, why and how among other things. Sharing information between researchers could lead to faster conclusions with stronger proof. As well as leading to new ideas.
* I am young and have just begun my path into research through an Internship before even entering college. Currently I am afraid of my idea(s) being scooped if I share too much of it. But this article mentioned that time-stamps and every change to a page is stored someplace so that the work could be tracked back to an 'original' creator, which is a bit comforting.
When one does anything, there is a chance to risk hurting one's career. However, if one is witnessed to falsify information intentionally and repeatedly... that is definitely going to hurt their career.
I think that if research is being done to patent an invention, it would be best to get the patent taken care of, then let the community know a lot about it. So that after you receive that patent you can ask opinions and get ways to improve the invention and then add more people to the acknowledgment page.
I believe that open notebook science is a good thing especially because of the possibility that it allows for other people to read one's research and then comment on it, either point out flaws/issues to be improved or stating that the research is good, and create questions to inspire more research. I relish the chance to interact with others and note their opinion and/or information on a topic because its a new perspective on things I have a stance on or its totally new and something to learn!
Those wikis and/or blogs could be a good way to screen interns and other members of a research team.
This peice was well balanced and unperturbed by biased information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that science has been tilted by the Websites and blogs. This has altered the course of science by using some incorrect and biased information.
I hope that Web 2.0 will change the inference of false articles and information with the truth
The most pressing problem with 'Science 2.0' is one of noise. There is already too much scientific literature for any mortal researcher to keep up with (as my colleague Richard Grant notes on Nature Network: http://tinyurl.com/c3fbo3). If scientists adopt Web 2.0 technologies for any part of their professional activities, this problem can only increase. How can anyone find the information that is most relevant, or—because we all need to look outside our own field of research occasionally—simply interesting, when we cannot hope to keep up with everything published?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are technological approaches to this problem for sure: the semantic web (http://tinyurl.com/67btjm), tagging ‘folksonomy’ (http://tinyurl.com/d6kby); and human-driven filtering services such as digg.com, Friendfeed, and many more. But these technologies are still in their infancy. We are yet to see such tools integrated across different platforms or harnessing the requisite 'fuzziness' required to find things 'interesting' to the individual: a 'fuzzy' problem in itself.
An effective way of filtering content is to let someone else do it for you. Digg.com, Friendfeed: these rely on someone else doing the dirty work and sharing interesting or relevant information (and there is an implicit responsibility to reciprocate). This is the 'wisdom of crowds' put to new effect. But here the problem is one of trust. How do we know that the people commenting on articles, research, etc are bona fide peers in the scientific sense? The quality of comments on YouTube; the degrading of Slashdot.org; even the amount of noise at the Science Advisory Board (SAB: http://scienceboard.net) all point towards a fundamental problem with the democratic process as it currently applies to Web 2.0.
At Faculty of 1000 (http://www.F1000.com) we’ve approached the trust issue by creating a platform for around five thousand experienced and respected scientists and clinicians to evaluate papers for the rest of the community, thus providing a quality filtering system for the biomedical literature. Evaluations can be from any published article, not just the leading journals, and cover very recent articles as well as older ones. In this way we can commit to highlighting important new research within a few weeks of it being published, as well as keeping older, more classic articles 'alive'. This addresses the existing common interest of scientists and clinicians in finding important, relevant or interesting papers.
What Faculty of 1000 offers is quality democratic, post-publication peer review that ranks papers according to how important the community views them. To this end we are developing plans for open discussion forums focused around evaluated papers—an open 'journal club' in effect—and are working on an improved ranking system. We also aim to expand our 'Faculty' to increase our response time and breadth of coverage.
In the face of all the informational ‘noise’, perhaps the greatest thing that Faculty of 1000 offers is the saving of time. Social networking/Web 2.0 takes up a vast amount of time that could, in the eyes of many scientists, be better spent on doing experiments or reading the literature (http://tinyurl.com/cumm2w). We provide a filtering service that speeds and improves the scientist's engagement with the best literature, enabling her/him to get to the information s/he requires more quickly, with less fuss and distraction. This is also where 'Science 2.0' can become worthwhile.
Web 2.0 is maturing and rapidly becoming much more than blogs, wikis, and social networking. It is transforming research through knowledge networks that enable open collaboration and communication of information in translational medicine. A recent presentation on one such company Jumper (www.jumpernetworks.com) opened my eyes to the possibilities of knowledge networks to transform bench-to-bedside information exchange.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeb 2.0 is maturing and rapidly becoming much more than blogs, wikis, and social networking. It is transforming research through knowledge networks that enable open collaboration and communication of information in translational medicine. A recent presentation on one such company Jumper (www.jumpernetworks.com) opened my eyes to the possibilities of knowledge networks to transform bench-to-bedside information exchange.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are beginning to implement some Web 2.0 software behind our firewall. Even on our private network we have some significant issues to confront controlling proprietary information and how it is shared. We are deploying pbwikis, and blogs, as well as a homegrown version of facebook. In particular we liked the security permissions in the jumper knowledgebase as well as the spree q&a software that allow us to centrally manage and log all access. What will make or break the successful use of Web 2.0 in biological research will be managing how and with whom we share specific information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are beginning to implement some Web 2.0 software behind our firewall. Even on our private network we have some significant issues to confront controlling proprietary information and how it is shared. We are deploying pbwikis, and blogs, as well as a homegrown version of facebook. In particular we liked the security permissions in the jumper knowledgebase as well as the spree q&a software that allow us to centrally manage and log all access. The success of Web 2.0 in biological research will depend on how successful the software can be in securing how and with whom we share our proprietary information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy suggestion is to get rid of print journals altogether. The plan would be that you would post an article and it would be sent for review, The reviewers would rank the article and make suggestions and coments, however they could not reject it. The author could reply to the suggestions or edit the article and it would go for another round of review. The reviewers could then change their ranks and comments. In the end the article would be posted on the web along with it's final rank and the reviews. Readers could also post ranks and reviews. Citations to the articles and "hits" would be recorded along with the article. In the end scientific articles would be similar to travel web sites. The reader would have the article and correspondence about it as well as all the subsequent articles that used it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch a system could be extended to a networking system where you could become a "friend" of everyone who read a paper that you did, or look at other papers that they read.
The basic idea is that once we get rid of of print journals a whole world opens up.
I am a Swiss translator and have gone online in 1988 - nobody knew what I was talking about then. We were happy when Germany went online and when we could finally reach Geneva without trouble as they used the (incompatible) French format. Things were slow, the term of website or the www protocol did not exist as yet but what a difference!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTranslators have long used the net extensively - and none of us would like to go back to how things were before the www revolution (besides, the http was invented at CERN in Switzerland by a British national, so ...). All of a sudden, the world was our library of Alexandria and doors to fascinating science and knowledge opened.
Translators have used blogs and forums such as leo.org before most people even knew what we were talking about. We never held back our knowledge and solutions and we all profited from the ensuing dialogues.
Of course, I understand that being given credit for R&D is a concern - but as long as we document whatever we do - and blogs, etc. are documentary evidence, too - things are likely to progress without so many dead ends.
Besides, asking your peers for input and presenting your thoughts or interpretations publicly wonderfully sharpens your thought processes. Translators working as interpreters have always known this.
When I was still at uni, our professors used to welcome all students participating in seminars not from our faculty or department for their valuable input as they tended to illuminate aspects we simply did not think of. Online conferences and blogs provide this very same and enriching variety of thought, and not simply inputs by other specialists of the same profession.
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