On Tuesday, July 24, John Wilbanks came to the Science Center in Second Life to discuss Science Commons (SC), a fairly new initiative of Creative Commons. John is the Vice President of SC. Below is the transcript of that discussion.

(More text follows the break…)

Note: Transcript is lightly edited. Everyone quoted gave permission. All times are Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). I’m Troy McLuhan in Second Life (SL).

[10:00] Troy McLuhan: JDub Oh here is our special guest today. He’s John Wilbanks, VP of Science Commons
[10:01] Troy McLuhan: I think scientists are growingly aware of Intellectual Property issues, which is a nice segue into Science Commons…
[10:01] JDub Oh: Kait Flanagan is also from SC
[10:01] JDub Oh: Welcome Kait!
[10:01] Kait Flanagan: Hey!
[10:02] Troy McLuhan: So, John, what’s your elevator pitch for Science Commons?
[10:02] JDub Oh: The short version would be that
[10:02] JDub Oh: there is a lot of functionality that we take for granted on the web
[10:03] JDub Oh: e-commerce, relevance-based search, low transaction costs
[10:03] JDub Oh: that we don’t get for science yet
[10:03] Jay30 Bing: Drexel Libraries hosted Intellectual Property Symposium this Spring. Michael Carroll was one of the speakers.
[10:03] JDub Oh: Intellectual property – especially copyright – is one reason for that
[10:03] Jay30 Bing: http://www.library.drexel.edu/services/symposium2007.html

[10:03] JDub Oh: but, there are also cultural and social and technical reasons
[10:04] JDub Oh: so, science commons is trying to identify how we can
[10:04] JDub Oh: apply solutions to a defined set of blockages to information movement and knowledge transfer
[10:04] JDub Oh: and test those solutions out
[10:04] JDub Oh: We’re focused on neuroscience for now
[10:05] JDub Oh: and we’re starting to look at areas in geospatial and biodiversity data
[10:05] JDub Oh: That’s the quick version
[10:05] JDub Oh: but let’s get some group conversation going!
[10:05] Morrhys Graysmark: Who are you partnering with, JDub?
[10:06] JDub Oh: We have three projects, each with different partners
[10:06] JDub Oh: Our copyrights project partners with journals and universities
[10:06] Wheeler Klaar: Is the science commons similar to the creative commons?
[10:06] JDub Oh: including Public Library of Science, BioMed Central, Hindawi, Nature
[10:07] Kait Flanagan: Science Commons is a project of Creative Commons
[10:07] JDub Oh: We also work with Carnegie Mellon and MIT on this
[10:07] Wheeler Klaar: Ok, so it is a subset.
[10:07] JDub Oh: On our biological materials project, we work with a set of ten university tech transfer offices
[10:07] JDub Oh: as well as biological materails manufacturers
[10:08] JDub Oh: On our open source knowledge management, we work with the world wide web consortium
[10:08] Raimundo Boucher: what is the aim? transport to SL or is SL just a communication medium?
[10:08] JDub Oh: and a set of neurodegenerative research foundations
[10:08] Morrhys Graysmark: Impressive, thanks JDub.
[10:08] JDub Oh: Troy asked us to come in and chat today, so SL is a communications medium to us
[10:08] Jay30 Bing: Biolocal materials? When does the FDA approval come into picture?
[10:09] JDub Oh: We are stolidly analog in projects
[10:09] JDub Oh: We are working far in advance of FDA approval
[10:09] Raimundo Boucher nods
[10:09] JDub Oh: FDA is typically dealing with the outputs of research
[10:09] Jay30 Bing: I am interested in learning more about it since we have a group here working on Biomaterials as well.
[10:09] JDub Oh: We’re focused on the cycle and the inputs for research
[10:10] Peace Furst: Is this your first presentation in SL?
[10:10] Raimundo Boucher: What inputs are you talking about?
[10:10] Troy McLuhan: John gave one previous presentation in SL, in May or so

Note: I checked and John’s first presentation in SL was given on April 16, 2007.

[10:11] Kait Flanagan: (John’s frozen right now … please pardon the interruption)
[10:12] Wheeler Klaar: Hi JDub, what do you think of the bill that might require researchers to post their articles for free with NIH grants.
[10:12] Kait Flanagan: Ok, troy … I’ve been asked by my meatspace office mate to fill in while he logs back in :)
[10:12] Troy McLuhan: Okay :)
[10:12] Peace Furst: I am interested in the reach of events like this – while we wait for John maybe we could all say where we are from
[10:12] Kait Flanagan: As for the NIH mandate, plainly put … we like.
[10:12] Kait Flanagan: ha
[10:13] Troy McLuhan: Peace has a nice question: Where are you from?
[10:13] Peace Furst: North Carolina
[10:13] Wheeler Klaar: Will the NIH mandate help push other disciplines into Open Access?
[10:13] Jay30 Bing: I am Jay Bhatt. Engineering Librarian at Drexel Univ.
[10:14] Slosh Quackenbush: I’m from Drexel, with Jay
[10:14] Ann Enigma: I teach New Media and Comp Sci in Rhode Island
[10:14] Kait Flanagan: Project manager of SC here, originally from Rochester NY, but we’re based here at MIT in Cambridge, MA
[10:14] Wheeler Klaar: Sci/Eng librarian at the Univ of Denver.
[10:14] Kyumars Amat: Switzerland, ETH Zurich
[10:14] Zen Zeddmore: I’m john smith from earth
[10:14] Peace Furst: Welcome Zen
[10:16] Zen Zeddmore: Yes the alternative to open source and open science is stupid uninformed people and the world will not survive that way.

Note: Above comment was moved earlier to improve flow.

[10:14] JDub Oh: Sorry, had a nice crash there – I’m based at MIT
[10:15] Troy McLuhan: Welcome Back. Can you tell us a bit about “Nature Precedings”?
[10:16] JDub Oh: Nature Precedings
[10:16] JDub Oh: is a “pre-print” server
[10:16] JDub Oh: which means that, after you submit a paper to a journal
[10:16] JDub Oh: You can put a copy on Nature’s site
[10:17] JDub Oh: using a CC license

Note: CC = Creative Commons

[10:17] JDub Oh: This is analogous to what the physics community had had, called the arxiv
[10:17] Wheeler Klaar: to any journal, or just one of Natures journals?
[10:17] Raimundo Boucher: Sorry to interrupt there, might have a point to add to this
[10:17] JDub Oh: This Nature service is open for anything
[10:17] Raimundo Boucher: will those papers have been reviewed already
[10:17] JDub Oh: even articles you do not plan to submit for peer review
[10:17] Raimundo Boucher: and will you guys work with a ranking
[10:18] JDub Oh: This is “pre print” which means pre-peer review
[10:18] JDub Oh: This is not SC’s server, but Nature’s
[10:18] Kid Kuhn: How are you going to get journals to accept this?
[10:18] Raimundo Boucher: So it would rather been used for review than as an ‘objective source’
[10:18] JDub Oh: It is simply a database of papers that Nature maintains
[10:18] Jay30 Bing: Recently I heard that Professional Engineering Publishing, publishers to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, have launched a new open access service for the engineering community called Engineering Open Choice.
[10:19] JDub Oh: that are copies of papers that scientists submit to journals
[10:19] JDub Oh: This is a common practice in many fields
[10:19] JDub Oh: especially physics
[10:19] Troy McLuhan: I think it might be useful, for example, to establish precedence
[10:19] JDub Oh: Nature Precedings is simply an experiment of this idea in biology
[10:20] Raimundo Boucher: Ok but unless reviewed more prone to error?
[10:20] JDub Oh: this is different than the “open access journal”
[10:20] Galileo Kuhn: I can attest that in physics, the arXiv service is now indisensible and quite ingrained.
[10:20] JDub Oh: which is a different model of access to the final copy of the article
[10:20] JDub Oh: It is trivial to link the pre-print to the final copy of the article
[10:20] Ann Enigma: There is arXiv.org …
[10:20] Troy McLuhan: Will the stuff submitted be archival, so you can reference it?
[10:20] JDub Oh: and there is conflicting research as to how much error is corrected in review
[10:20] Kid Kuhn: From what I know I think most social science journals claim soul copyright on articles published in them
[10:21] JDub Oh: Troy: Nature says they intend to make precedings archival, I assume by citations to the DOI of a pre-print
[10:22] JDub Oh: but, if you are going to cite and there is a final version, that is the version that you should cite
[10:22] Raimundo Boucher: Exactly point
[10:22] JDub Oh: Let’s back up a second
[10:22] Raimundo Boucher: and digging in nonfinal version could get your research very fastly offtrack
[10:22] JDub Oh: and talk about open access more generally
[10:23] JDub Oh: There are two generally accepted ways to go “open access”
[10:23] JDub Oh: the first is to publish in an open access journal
[10:23] JDub Oh: PLoS, BioMed Central, etc.
[10:23] JDub Oh: These are journals that don’t take copyright away from authors
[10:23] JDub Oh: The second is to “self-archive” a copy of the paper
[10:24] JDub Oh: This method has a lot of differences from journal to journal as to what version you can archive
[10:24] JDub Oh: but most allow the pre-print to be archived
[10:24] JDub Oh: Nature’s effort [Nature Precedings] falls on the second methods
[10:24] JDub Oh: and provides a central database for biology self-archiving
[10:25] Aidenn Brooks: How do they know that the pre-print will become a final version if it has not been peer-reviewed?
[10:25] JDub Oh: (in the event that the journal doesn’t allow deposit in PubMed Central)
[10:25] JDub Oh: Aidenn: they don’t
[10:25] Aidenn Brooks: ok
[10:25] JDub Oh: The norms for how this works will emerge
[10:25] JDub Oh: but they are as yet unknown
[10:26] JDub Oh: In physics, it’s worked out quite well
[10:26] Galileo Kuhn: Yes, it works well in physics.
[10:26] Kid Kuhn: I’m curious, what is all the money that journals make used for? Reviewers and authors all work for free
[10:26] JDub Oh: Kid, in some cases it supports societies (conferences etc)
[10:27] JDub Oh: In some cases it goes to the sharelholders of the corporations
[10:27] Troy McLuhan: Editors, publishing on paper, distribution, promotion, infrastructure….
[10:27] Morrhys Graysmark: My impression is that journals are not big money-makers; it’s expensive to publish a journal, especially in technical fields.
[10:27] JDub Oh: Some publishers report as much as 30% profit margins
[10:27] JDub Oh: while some publishers barely get by
[10:27] Kid Kuhn: Seems a bit odd you need so much money when 99% of the work is being done for free.
[10:28] JDub Oh: [It] depends on the number of readers, amount of funding in the field, etc.
[10:28] JDub Oh: “Publishing” is far from monolithic
[10:28] Peace Furst: Is SC planning to work with institutional repositories that are appearing on campuses
[10:28] Morrhys Graysmark: Very true.
[10:28] JDub Oh: Peace, we work more with the institutions themselves
[10:28] Spiral Mandelbrot: sales staff, account managers, all sorts need salaries
[10:28] JDub Oh: with provosts and librarians and tech transfer offices
[10:29] JDub Oh: than with the databases of papers
[10:29] Kid Kuhn: Yeah but journals that actually pay their writers also have staff etc.
[10:29] Raimundo Boucher: Very basic, more information on how papers work are to be find on ISI knowledge web of science
[10:29] Jay30 Bing: Excellent. If SC is going to with Campus IRs. We have one here at Drexel, too.
[10:29] JDub Oh: Jay30, we provide tools that libraries can implement
[10:29] JDub Oh: that make it easy to retain the rights to deposit inan IR
[10:30] Jay30 Bing: What kind of tools?
[10:30] JDub Oh: you can drop an IFrame into your campus web page

Note: An IFrame is an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document. Source: Wikipedia

[10:30] Kid Kuhn: Rai do you have an URL please? I get a mess of links when I Google “ISI web of knowledge”
[10:30] Raimundo Boucher: Could you define IR?
[10:30] JDub Oh: and it allows faculty to auto-generate a contract and retain the rights to deposit in the IR
[10:30] Raimundo Boucher: Yes I will send you an URL
[10:30] JDub Oh: Kait will link it in
[10:30] Kid Kuhn: Ty
[10:30] Kait Flanagan: http://scholars.sciencecommons.org
[10:30] Kait Flanagan: Ta daa
[10:31] Kid Kuhn: Great thanks ya
[10:31] JDub Oh: IR: Institutional Repository

...

[10:31] Wheeler Klaar: This is the AIP costs to publish an article—http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-8/captions/p35cap2.html

[10:31] Jay30 Bing: Here is or IR http://idea.library.drexel.edu/
[10:32] Galileo Kuhn: Wheeler, that’s a good article. AIP is nonprofit though, methinks, versus, say, Elsevier.
[10:32] Raimundo Boucher: You’ll have to be academic to see Web of Knowledge, it’s published by Thomson Scientific, http://scientific.thomson.com/index.html
[10:32] Jay30 Bing: We are also exploring digitizing engineering projects, Research Posters by students, and faculty and staff papers
[10:32] Wheeler Klaar: Well, Elsevier is one of those that makes 30-40% profit.
[10:33] Raimundo Boucher: True Klaar,
[10:33] Galileo Kuhn: Exactly.
[10:33] Wheeler Klaar: Their shareholders do good.
[10:33] Wheeler Klaar: I mean, they do well financially…
[10:33] Raimundo Boucher: (Excuse me have to leave for personal stuff, will be back)
[10:33] Galileo Kuhn: :)
[10:33] Kid Kuhn: What does “you have to be academic” mean?
[10:34] Troy McLuhan: Have a license via your university, I think
[10:34] Spiral Mandelbrot: (Those profits may include their ‘arms’ conferences—that they promised to cancel this year)
[10:34] JDub Oh: Yes, the motivation behind open access
[10:34] JDub Oh: is that the vast majority of scholarly literature
[10:34] JDub Oh: is only accessible to those at elite universities
[10:34] JDub Oh: who have the financial resources to subscribe
[10:34] Zen Zeddmore: or elite hackers
[10:35] Kid Kuhn: How about publication processes were partially automatized, it’s a fun idea. A computer selects a reviewer and mails the article to him/her
[10:35] Kid Kuhn: Would decrease costs… :)
[10:35] Aidenn Brooks: Surely most large public libraries have the resources to subscribe too.
[10:35] JDub Oh: Aidenn, actually no
[10:35] Morrhys Graysmark: They don’t have the demand for the journals, either.
[10:35] JDub Oh: Costs have increased at 6X the cost of living over the last 25 years
[10:36] JDub Oh: and library funding has not kept up
[10:36] Aidenn Brooks: Ok
[10:36] Zen Zeddmore: Actually really and truly they don’t have that kind of money
[10:36] Kid Kuhn: I am missing quite a bit here at my university in Sweden, can not access all parts of ACM library for example
[10:36] Wheeler Klaar: FYI, the chart is from this Physics today article, I think from 2001 or so, “Physicists in the New Era of Electronic Publishing”, James Langer.
[10:36] Troy McLuhan: So there is a lot of experimentation with new business models these days. Not unlike the music business
[10:37] Kid Kuhn: I don’t get that chart Wheeler. An article costs 2000 dollars to publish?
[10:37] Zen Zeddmore: Yes
[10:37] Wheeler Klaar: Yup.
[10:37] JDub Oh: There is no absolute cost
[10:37] JDub Oh: It depends on a set of factors
[10:37] Wheeler Klaar: This is about the same cost that authors pay for Open Access.
[10:38] Zen Zeddmore: What does that mean Wheeler?
[10:38] Kid Kuhn: It doesnt make any sense at all that it would cost 2000 dollars. hehe
[10:38] JDub Oh: If the publisher is in London, $2000 is the open access cost
[10:38] JDub Oh: (for review administration, page layout, edits, etc)
[10:38] JDub Oh: but if you’re in Cairo – like Hindawi – page costs are a lot lower and the article can get done for $400
[10:38] Wheeler Klaar: Some journals have an author pays model—an author can pay money to have an article be Open Access instead of reader or subscriber pays.
[10:38] Zen Zeddmore: hahaha that is so ridiculous
[10:38] Kid Kuhn: Lets all move to Cairo!
[10:39] Kid Kuhn: lol
[10:39] Kid Kuhn: Author pays.. oh yes that makes sense. Not only are we funding ourselves, now we also have to fund the journals! :)
[10:39] JDub Oh: I like the phrase “funder pays” – the idea that dissemination is part of the cost of research
[10:40] Spiral Mandelbrot: In some cases those are ‘developing countries’ fees subsidized by the journal—i.e. the rest of us
[10:40] Kid Kuhn: Yeah JDub, but what if we are self-financed
[10:40] JDub Oh: and if you give the author the choice of how to spend the money, then the market will move away from the most expensive journals
[10:40] JDub Oh: and towards open access
[10:40] Kid Kuhn: Why don’t we just publish everything online and have the review process automatized? Makes sense to me.
[10:41] JDub Oh: Kid, i think the tradition of peer review is hard to sweep away like this
[10:41] JDub Oh: but i would point you towards PLoS One”
[10:41] Kid Kuhn: I’m not saying there shouldn’t be reviews, I’m just saying a computer could select the reviewer from a DB
[10:41] Zen Zeddmore: KK the dynamics of the web haven’t settled in yet . when everyone has their home computer server then is a new game.
[10:42] Raimundo Boucher: I think a part of open source works already
[10:42] Troy McLuhan: Tenure is based on publication in peer-reviewed journals, after all – it’s ingrained in the culture of science
[10:42] Raimundo Boucher: So in biotech, people are publishing their DNA sequences for free on NCBI
[10:42] Raimundo Boucher: It works very nicely
[10:42] JDub Oh: PLoS one is a new process by which the idea of validating the science itself is separated from the “what’s the significance” of the article
[10:42] Ann Enigma: The type of semantic analysis required to choose the best reviewer in a field for any particular article is still too difficult to automate.
[10:43] Wheeler Klaar: http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23679/ “Public Library of Science (PLoS) is raising its publication fee for the first time since its inception in 2003, hiking rates by up to two-thirds the original cost. Advocates of the open access model say the increase reflects how much it costs to publish an article”
[10:43] Kid Kuhn: PLoS One sounds a bit scary but I’ll look it up
[10:43] JDub Oh: Thus, you can radically shorten peer review by removing the attempt to guess “significance” of an article
[10:43] Troy McLuhan: One often submits a list of potential reviewers though, no?
[10:43] JDub Oh: and cut the costs of review
[10:43] Galileo Kuhn: Ann, I agree.
[10:43] JDub Oh: It is online only
[10:43] JDub Oh: and I think it’s the first real change in the model
[10:43] JDub Oh: The idea that reviewers can figure out what is “high impact” before publication
[10:43] Kid Kuhn: interesting
[10:44] JDub Oh: distorts a lot of the picture
[10:44] JDub Oh: thus, saying, let’s just see if the science is good or bad, and let the citations determine the rest
[10:44] Troy McLuhan: For the record: PLoS = Public Library of Science at http://www.plos.org/
[10:44] JDub Oh: this is the new peer review model that I think has a chance
[10:44] JDub Oh: (Disclosure: SC is partnered with PLos One)
[10:45] Kid Kuhn: If I had to pay for publication I wouldn’t be publishing anything for 5-6 years…
[10:45] Troy McLuhan: Even if your funder gave you a budget to publish?
[10:45] Wheeler Klaar: Problem is, important science can be found in obscure journals, because the high impact journals don’t condone leading edge non-mainstream science…
[10:45] Kid Kuhn: I am self funded Troy
[10:45] JDub Oh: troy: In social sciences, less than 50% of papers come from funded research
[10:45] JDub Oh: Most are just the work of the social scientist
[10:45] Raimundo Boucher: I recon partly that Wheeler
[10:45] Kid Kuhn: Troy, to clarify, I am a PhD student
[10:46] JDub Oh: Thus, it’s good to break apart hard sciences and humanities at some points in the discussion
[10:46] Kid Kuhn: Yeah thanks JDub
[10:46] Kid Kuhn: Yeah
[10:46] Kid Kuhn: Of course one could seek grants to get something published
[10:46] Kid Kuhn: But gosh, to put in that work to get money to get published would be hard
[10:47] Kid Kuhn: It is a tricky question who’s going to pay…
[10:47] Spiral Mandelbrot: In the sciences you end up doing the grant work before the research, maybe in social sciences you’ll have to do it after
[10:47] Zen Zeddmore: Unless you read the research that was done on how hard it is to get grants
[10:47] JDub Oh: I think that there will always be some page layout and editing costs
[10:47] Spiral Mandelbrot: or universities may end up funding for their own students and faculty
[10:47] Jay30 Bing: I think CoS (Community of Science) database can help locating grants for different types of Humanities related projects as well.
[10:47] Kid Kuhn: lol yes Zen
[10:48] JDub Oh: but, there’s a set of emerging services that can subsidize some of those
[10:48] JDub Oh: I think it was Ann Enigma who mentioned semantics
[10:48] Ann Enigma: yup.
[10:48] JDub Oh: In many fields, semantic markup is the key to the utility of a paper
[10:48] Zen Zeddmore: and also mentioned an enigma too ironically : )
[10:48] JDub Oh: and that’s a service that can defray the costs of publication
[10:49] Kid Kuhn: What if governments took charge of it by giving public libraries responsibility for publishing all research?
[10:49] JDub Oh: (I think that the guy who won the Field prize and declined it simply put his papers in the arxiv and never submitted them for publication)

Note: This is a reference to Grigori Perelman , who proved the Poincare Conjecture and declined the Fields Medal.

[10:49] JDub Oh: Kid, that’s analogous in a sense to the NIH mandate
[10:50] Kid Kuhn: NIH?
[10:50] Galileo Kuhn: JDub, confirmed on the Fields Medal, that’s true.
[10:50] JDub Oh: though it’s more about giving database access regardess of publisher
[10:50] Troy McLuhan: The idea being “If the public paid for the research, then the public should have free access to it.”
[10:50] JDub Oh: [NIH =] National Institutes of Health
[10:50] Kid Kuhn: Ah yes
[10:50] JDub Oh: but publishers have evolved expertise in areas that libraries don’t have
[10:50] JDub Oh: social networks of reviewers and editors
[10:51] Kid Kuhn: I see quite often in discussion forums online people say “I read an article on this but unfortunately you need to have a subscription to see it”
[10:51] JDub Oh: Libraries are the keepers of the record, not the keepers of the social networks
[10:51] Spiral Mandelbrot: It would just move the work from publishers to libraries…you still have to pay for it
[10:51] Raimundo Boucher: Count me in Kid
[10:51] JDub Oh: So, I’d prefer to see libraries maintain the records of the science canon
[10:51] JDub Oh: and publishers develop a model where they only get to keep the content briefly, on its way to the Library
[10:51] Zen Zeddmore: Troy, I’ve discussed this at length with my father in law ex professor and his stance is “universities rely on income from that research”
[10:52] JDub Oh: and make their money on the services built on top of the content
[10:52] JDub Oh: e.g., semantics, search, indexing, analytics,
[10:52] Spiral Mandelbrot: “Income from research”?
[10:52] Zen Zeddmore: Who get to develop the IP?
[10:52] Wheeler Klaar: JDub, do you think libraries should be the records holders, or the publisher?
[10:53] JDub Oh: Zen, I think this may be a conflation with the downstream IP rights
[10:53] Kid Kuhn: IP?
[10:53] JDub Oh: Publishing and income aren’t related at the uni level most of the time
[10:53] Troy McLuhan: IP = Intellectual Property
[10:53] Kid Kuhn: Ah yes
[10:53] Kid Kuhn: ty
[10:53] Peace Furst: Research income = Research overhead on grants
[10:53] JDub Oh: and if you plan to patent, you typically wait to publish til after applying to the patent office
[10:53] Jay30 Bing: I thought of our talk on Peer Review last year: Peer Review in the Google Age: Is technology changing the way science is done and evaluated?
[10:53] Jay30 Bing: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006004/
[10:54] Zen Zeddmore: ty Jay30
[10:54] Spiral Mandelbrot: Some analogies to early society publication—you had to be a member, but then you could publish anything
[10:54] Kid Kuhn: I like the idea of reviewers not being selected by humans. Would be very interesting to see if that changed what gets published
[10:54] Spiral Mandelbrot: Review came after publication early on
[10:54] Zen Zeddmore: KK it might be scary too.
[10:55] JDub Oh: Wheeler, i would prefer to see libraries – or government repositories – hosting the long-term copies
[10:55] JDub Oh: because publishers buy each other and companies come and go
[10:55] JDub Oh: but universities and governments
[10:55] JDub Oh: endure much longer
[10:55] Spiral Mandelbrot: as a librarian, I agree!
[10:55] Kid Kuhn: Scary fun Zen. :)
[10:55] Galileo Kuhn: Reviewers need to be chosen intelligently, not randomly.
[10:55] Kid Kuhn: Computers are intelligent!
[10:55] Kid Kuhn: lol
[10:55] Wheeler Klaar: With libraries going to e-only subscriptions, the ””record holding” is now being done by the publishers, not the libraries.
[10:55] Zen Zeddmore: Scary as in losing touch with the meaning and significance of science.
[10:56] Spiral Mandelbrot: A researcher told me recently that she sent in lists of who she didn’t want to review her stuff—people who didn’t like her
[10:56] Kid Kuhn: We could also get an opportunity to grade the reviewers… lol
[10:56] Aidenn Brooks: I agree too that governments and public libraries should play a part here. And a universal indexing system is required to access any document.
[10:56] Kid Kuhn: Zen, the meaning of science is that certain dominating people should decide what science is?
[10:57] Wheeler Klaar: We have both LOCKSS and Portico—What do you think of those?
[10:57] JDub Oh: I think the point is more that certain people can only dominate science if you have to have “Experts” assess “Significance”
[10:57] JDub Oh: Significance assessment is the worst part of peer reivew IMHO
[10:57] JDub Oh: It enforces social networks
[10:58] Troy McLuhan: So the idea is that you let citations and other measures determine significance post facto?
[10:58] JDub Oh: excludes radical ideas
[10:58] Galileo Kuhn: JDub, agreed.
[10:58] Kid Kuhn: Yeah JDub agree with that
[10:58] Spiral Mandelbrot: depends on the size of the field, too. A small field can be dominated by a single reviewer to say what is good science
[10:58] Zen Zeddmore: I don’t even know how to reply to that KK. I was saying that people should be involved.
[10:58] Kid Kuhn: Yeah Spiral, good point
[10:58] Jay30 Bing: I agree. People should be involved.
[10:58] Kid Kuhn: Yes, but perhaps they don’t need to be involved in all parts of the process
[10:59] JDub Oh: All, I have to take off now – but Kait will take over in my stead
[10:59] Zen Zeddmore: JDub you are so on target it’s not funny
[10:59] Kid Kuhn: Reduce costs, increase of equality in reviews.
[10:59] JDub Oh: Want to make this more of a regular thing?
[10:59] Troy McLuhan: Thanks John! We’ll have to do this again sometime!
[10:59] Ann Enigma: Thank you!
[10:59] Kid Kuhn: Yes this was a fab discussion
[10:59] Kid Kuhn: I love the Internet. lol
[10:59] Jay30 Bing: Thanks, John. We Learned a lot so far.
[10:59] Spiral Mandelbrot: ty. A regular session would be great!
[11:00] Slosh Quackenbush: Agreed, this has been very interesting!
[11:00] Zen Zeddmore: This is a good time slot for me.
[11:00] JDub Oh: and if any librarians want the tools, email me
[11:00] JDub Oh: I am wilbanks [at] creativecommons [dot] org in the real world
[11:00] Wheeler Klaar: Regular session, maybe once a quarter or a month?
[11:00] Peace Furst: OK John thanks for coming and talking to us
[11:00] Jay30 Bing: I think we can sort of decide on an agenda earlier.
[11:00] Wheeler Klaar: bye bye.
[11:00] Zen Zeddmore: JDub can you send me stuff? my SO is a preservation Dept at CASE.
[11:01] Spiral Mandelbrot: If we meet regularly we can focus on one aspect at a time
[11:01] Kid Kuhn: I appreciate if the meetings are not much later than this since I’m in Sweden. I already have seminars running at 3 AM my time. :)
[11:01] Troy McLuhan: Okay, I’ll try to set up something regular with John
[11:01] Peace Furst: This is not too early for west coast and not too late for Euros
[11:01] Kid Kuhn: Yeah Peace, its is a good time
[11:02] Jay30 Bing: Yes, this is a good time.
[11:02] Kait Flanagan: Troy, should we save further discussion for another engagement?
[11:02] Zen Zeddmore: Yes, the sweet spot internationally(if you’re not Austrailian)
[11:02] Ann Enigma: Thanks, Troy.
[11:02] Troy McLuhan: Okay, it seems many had to go so perhaps we should adjourn
[11:02] Aidenn Brooks: I’m an Aussie – but I don’t mind getting up early for another good discussion! :-)
[11:03] Kid Kuhn: I joined the Science Center group, will you announce further meetings to that?
[11:03] Kait Flanagan: Sure thing. thanks again for hosting this.
[11:03] Troy McLuhan: Yes
[11:03] Kid Kuhn: Whats your time Aidenn?
[11:03] Aidenn Brooks: 4 a.m. now
[11:03] Kid Kuhn: omg
[11:03] Troy McLuhan: Wow – that’s like the worst possible time
[11:03] Jay30 Bing: Truly an International chat.
[11:03] Aidenn Brooks: It’s ok.

...

[11:04] Troy McLuhan: Bye, and have a great day (or night)
[11:04] Troy McLuhan: I’ll publish the transcript on my blog on Nature Network
[11:05] Troy McLuhan: I’m T. Troy McConaghy in RL and there
[11:05] Jay30 Bing: Thank so much! It was a great experience. My first on SL as a group chat with folks from all over.

If you’d like to be informed of future events like this in Second Life, then join the “Second Life” group on Nature Network or join the “Science Center” group in Second Life.

Copyright© 2007 by T. Troy McConaghy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License