According to a recent online survey, most biologists don’t read science blogs or participate in social networking sites (see discussion at Gobbledygook blog). Biologists prefer to read the literature; Web 2.0 sites for scientists haven’t yet built up a reputation for accuracy; and online tools useful to scientists are unlikely to be found on Facebook or Digg. Does this mean that Web 2.0 (the name sometimes given to the interactive web) is not working for biologists, or just that it is too new for them?
Right now, the different pieces of Web 2.0 don’t quite fit together to provide a useful, seamless service for most biologists, says Gobbledygook author Martin Fenner — although the story is different for chemistry, as is mentioned in the comments section of his blog. But one route to such a project’s success is to focus on how it can improve science, rather than get distracted by all possible uses of the technology. An example: Web 2.0 should make the process of paper writing much easier, through online writing, reference sharing, and collaboration and coordination tools.
Nature 453, xii; 8 May 2008
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From the blogosphere
An archive of the weekly "From the Blogosphere" column on the Authors page in Nature, highlighting nature.com blog posts of interest to scientists in their role as authors and peer-reviewers. We welcome comments and suggestions for topics to cover.
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Web 2.0 and biology -- 8 May 2008
- Date:
- Thursday, 08 May 2008 - 12:24 GMT
Last updated: Thursday, 08 May 2008 - 12:24 GMT
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Comments
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Any idea whether this is a generational thing? e.g. whether PIs don’t read blogs, but students and postdocs are starting to?
I know that my other weblog is read by students, postdocs and some PIs (as well as the deputy VC Research). My boss doesn’t read it, but knows about it.
Can’t speak for their reading of weblogs in general, of course.
I would believe that blogs are more popular with students than with postdocs or PIs. And a lot of German students use studiVZ which is a German Facebook clone specifically for students. But Phil Selenko was surprised that no student showed up in our recent Nature Network Berlin Pub night.
A killer Web 2.0 application for scientists could change all that. A much improved PubMed, a Google Docs that can really be used to write papers or a really cool site for experimental protocols?
And picking up on this line of thought, I really think editors can help, too. But, to echo Martin’s orginal post, many of them are not very web 2.0 themselves (yet?). Things are changing, but not very fast. Editors can help encourage regional meetings (in their areas) along the lines of the Berlin group started by Philipp. Of course, science news editors and writers are already doing a lot (eg Mitch Waldrop’s interesting experiment at Scienctific American, in which he wrote a “science 2.0” article, published it as a draft, got tons of comments from scientists, and then revised it for “final” publication in the magazine. (It was published a week or so ago in final form. Some of the comments are from people complaining that their comments on the draft were insufficiently taken into account for the final, so you can’t always win!).
But in this context I mean editors who make decisions about publication of scientific research, who can blog or start online journal clubs and that kind of thing, and “suck in” scientists. Noah Gray is an editor at Nature Neuroscience; he has done some great work in linking up a journal blog (Action Potential) with an online neuroscience journal club (on Nature Network). I think initiatives such as these will encourage, say, authors who may never have done anything other than “heard vaguely about” blogs and online networks, to actually get involved, via (say) an online discussion of their paper. Then they may well get hooked, or at least see some benefits.
Martin, I agree also that tools are the way. Collaborative editing via a system like Google Docs, I have often thought, must be a good way to develop and write a paper if you are part of an international collaboration and are otherwise relying on emailing drafts. I have yet to find anyone who is using “writing 2.0” services such as these, though. I’d be fascinated to hear if it is catching on.
If web 2.0 could come up with a killer app citation measure, that would help it to achieve escape velocity among biomedical researchers, I suspect.
(Disclosure: I’m publishing director at Nature with responsibility for our online actvities.)
David Crotty’s article, which seems to have kicked off this discussion, whilst taking a relatively negative view, makes some valid points. Yes, web applications for scientists need to save instead of cost them time. And yes, most of the new generation of web applications (including some that I’m involved with) aren’t as well designed as they should be. So let’s make them better, I say.
(I’ll also mention in passing that the report in The Register on the SXSW panel that I took part in last year, which David quotes and which attributes certain views to me, wasn’t particularly accurate, at least in terms of what I was trying to convey. For example, it’s true that many of our Web 2.0 initiatives aren’t profitable yet, but that’s because we’re still focused on making them as useful and popular as possible rather than making money from them.)
We’re in a period of great experimentation in this area, which is good for science as a whole even if most of the experiments will ultimately fail. And even those that succeed (personally I think that Nature Network is one) will often take a while to reach their full potential. As other people have already pointed out, this is a fundamental property of networks. Does that mean we should give up? I don’t think so. We (at Nature) are impatient to see our services succeed and provide value, but we also have long time horizons.
Though it’s become synonymous with user-generated content and network effects, Web 2.0 is really about making the most of the web in all sorts of different ways. To believe that these kinds of experiments are worthwhile in principle, you really only need to believe that we’re not yet making the most of the web in scientific communication. I’ve yet to hear anyone disagree with that view. And I don’t think the argument that goes, “I’m already busy and don’t have time for anything new” holds up at all. If that’s true, where did we all find so much time to do email? By spending less time doing other things that were less efficient for achieving our goals. Providing tools that make research more efficient (and, I hope, more fun) is our goal and our challenge. No one ever said it would be easy, but neither is it beyond us. And whatever pessimists may think, we are making progress.
Thanks, Timo, I wholeheartedly agree with your perspective, and with your optimism about web 2.0.
I have suggested this as a discussion topic at Science Blogging 2008. I’ve linked to your remarkes here, and Martin’s at his blog in the SciBlogging “topic suggestion” forum.
I’m already busy and don’t have time for anything new.
I hear that argument a lot in the context of science blogging and I agree with Timo that it doesn’t hold. Twitter is another obvious example of something that needs a lot of time but is extremely successful. And Twitter also shows that successful Web 2.0 applications have something addictive about it – in a positive sense. Nature Network also has that quality. So it’s probably not exactly about saving time and becoming more productive.
I like David Crotty’s arguments because he reminds us that there still is a long way to go and we shouldn’t loose focus.