It is today perhaps taken for granted that the potential for the most exciting (dare I say ‘striking ’?) scientific discoveries lie at the interfaces between traditional disciplines. This presupposes that scientists will collaborate with each other: just within biology it is impossible for any single person to grok every subtlety in any work of significance.
In the olden days, when Henry was a lad, scientists used to collaborate by carving on stone tablets sending pieces of paper through something rather quaintly called The Royal Mail, or even (horrors!) by using telephones. The lucky few got to meet each other at conferences, but such was the slowness and unreliability of the Post Office and the lamentable quality of telephone lines that conferences had to be organized five years (at least) in advance, by which time time half the participants had died of the Black Death and the other half just plain forgotten.
Ahem. What I’m trying to say is that the internet has caused what might rightly be termed a paradigm shift in scientific collaboration. This sounds like a truism, but we are all so used to it now that it is a useful exercise to try and recall (or imagine, for the younger folk like Jenny ) the Days Before Email.
Before email, before the WWW and Gopher and FTP and telnet, scientific collaboration was slower, perhaps more formal. The internet has changed all that. I can email, twitter, iChat, even keep a weblog. People can get in touch with me, and I with them, we can share data, retrieve papers, correct and criticize manuscripts at nine inches per nanosecond.
What is worth remembering is that as email was becoming mainstream, many busy scientists dismissed it as trivial, or thought it worthless, or wondered how they would find the time. But they did, and now live by it (Diverting anecdote. My current boss often runs the lab by email—pointing out papers, telling us about NMR pulse programs, asking for status reports etc. Back in the day, I remember my DPhil supervisor remarking on the oddness of doing such a thing. No one thinks it unusual, now). Somehow they made time.
Today, we are seeing a similar resistance to another nascent paradigm (Ed: can we have a nascent paradigm?). It comes out of the internet, again, and is called Web 2.0.
The term Web 2.0 causes a great deal of confusion, and has probably started a few wars in less stable countries (such as Canberra , for example. But no one noticed). There is a rather turgid and impenetrable non-definition at Wikipedia. For now, I’m going to use Web 2.0 as convenient short-hand for “any kind of WWW-based meeting place”.
The distinguishing feature of Web 2.0 compared with the initial iteration (Web 1.0? WWW Lite?) is that instead of being a means of disseminating information from one (potentially authoritative) source in a ‘one to many’ or ‘top-down’ manner (e.g., you lot reading this), the ‘users’ themselves communicate information in a ‘many-to-many’ fashion, a ‘level playing field’ if you like (e.g., you lot commenting on this). This has enormous potential, as well as the possibility of grievous abuse (wikipedia , again).
Nature Network is itself an example of Web 2.0. There are lots of us here, all, I’d like to think, pretty reasonable in our chosen field, with a vast potential for collaboration. There are interesting posts, useful tips, and a hell of a lot of (highly enjoyable, admittedly) frivolity.
But when it comes down to it, the only question that really matters is
Is it working?
You see, I’ve persuaded the Faculty and my Department to partially fund my trip to London in August on the strength of
- The potential for better communication between scientists and the world at large (by ‘blogging’)
- The potential for better collaboration between scientists themselves, especially between those way out in the Antipodes and those with resources and good connections (by leveraging ‘Web 2.0’)
(It appears that my Dean and HoD believe in this. And now I wonder how remarkable that is?)
NN is not, of course, the only game in town.
ResearchGATE wants
to change the world of science by providing a global and powerful scientific web-based environment, in which scientists can interact, exchange knowledge and collaborate with researchers of different fields.
They claim to be the ‘first scientific network ’ (riiiight).
There is SciLink . There is the venerable Science Advisory Board , which I joined ten years ago. Cameron and others will tell you all about OpenWetWare and the like .
Perhaps there are too many, just as there are too many Gordon Conferences? Which is going to become the Facebook, and which the Myspace? If I’ve already joined SciLink, why should I join NN? Is there too much information out there, too much unreliable data?
What do the companies running and hosting these things (the ones that aren’t truly ‘open’, natch) get out of it? Marketing information — and if so, why aren’t we being paid for it (that, incidentally, was the original concept behind the SAB , to give that marketing power back to scientists).
I remembered, as I was planning this post, that there is a NN Collaboration forum (that incidentally took me a long time to track down). Rather tellingly, the latest comment is from Kathy Miller, who says
I’m a science writer putting together a story on the sociology of collaboration—specifically in the biomedical computing context. I’d love to know whether social networking sites like this one are really helping people build meaningful and lasting collaborations. I’m a doubter. Anyone have a good story to tell that fits this?
Her month-old question remains unanswered. And there is a lot of hostility, or apathy at least, towards these endeavours. It seems that most PIs and higher just are not interested (my Dean and HoD notwithstanding), just as they thought email was a waste of time that they did not have. The media do not help: the Grauniard spun NN as a dating service (actually, that’s not such a bad idea. At least there might be money in that). Second Life routinely gets trashed (and its potential for scientific networking is enormous ).
Why is there only one member in the Sydney Hub? How do we transfer the virtual to the actual: if, for example, I like what Jenny’s doing with her cells , how can I make use of that in my lab?
So, people. Is it working? And if not, is it worth making it work? (Conferences are still the best bet for networking, but with oil running out and prices going through the stratosphere, can we afford to not make all this work?).
If we agree that it is worth it, how do we do it?
Richard, thanks for the post. I forgot that virtual networking is much more important if you don’t live in Central Europe or on the United States East Coast. I can be in London, Munich or Paris within two hours and without spending too much money, but that is obviously different when you live in Sidney or Cape Town.
Networking can mean many different things. Collaboration is probably one of the more difficult tasks. I like the potential of virtual networks to enhance the physical networks. That’s why I’m looking forward to more local hubs on Nature Network.
And I like the tag very long posts.
In the olden days, when Henry was a lad, scientists used to collaborate by
carving on stone tabletssending pieces of paper through something rather quaintly called The Royal Mail, or even (horrors!) by using telephones.I remember it well. I joined Nature just 20 short years ago. Back then, if you can believe it, referees, authors, papers and so on were recorded in card indexes and we used typewriters and telephones.
The only computer lived in the editor’s office and was called the Octopus, like something out of a Bond movie. You could send a kind of electronic mail called MCI Mail but it was notoriously tricky, and success often demanded suitable propitiation of the Gods with chicken entrails, and, smearing one anothers’ faces with the blood, dancing three times round a pentagram scrawled on the floor with a mixture of red ochre and soot. If memory serves, Maxine was especially good at this part (the dancing round the pentagram, that is).
Nature hadn’t always been at this white-hot apotheotic zenith of the communications cutting-edge. Oh no. I’ve heard tales that back in the early 1980s, Nature gave the bum’s rush to a rep extolling the virtues of a concise recording, communication and information-retrieval system called writing, which was engraved on pieces of wood, or (if the Mac version), in pieces of knotted string. I believe that the rep ended up in the pot, and the editorial staff went back to using smoke-signals, as they’d done before. The editors changed their minds when referees’ reports were delayed by the imposition of smokeless zones. And, oh yes, the birdshit.
However, I do remember the day when Nature took delivery of its first fax machine and the fun we had trying to get it to transmit a manuscript from Professor Trellis on the release of calcium from intracellular stores—written in cuneiform on a baked-clay tablet.
quickly (it’s sunday after all), a few links about this subject:
Neat round-up Pierre.
Ah! I meant to link to the CSH Blog piece. Thanks, Pierre.
I wonder if a problem for starting collaborations with Web 2.0 is that it’s too open. I do have one publication for which I haven’t met any of my co-authors: it was all done by email. The collaboration started when one of the other authors posted a question to a mailing list, asking about a problem. I replied, and the discussions grew from there. But it only started because we were on a mailing list for people with similar interests.
For Web 2.0 to work, it has to create a concentration of enough people who are talking to each other. I’m not sure if NN is there yet – the groups I follow that would be suitable for discussing collaboration are pretty quiet.
In the second link Pierre gives, Bora points out that there are several sites available for discussions and collaborations, and asks which one will survive. I think NN has a better chance than most, because it has name recognition. But it might have to develop into something rather different if it is to stay ahead of the field. Unicycling giraffes, alas, might not be enough.
Unicycling giraffes, alas, might not be enough.
All depends on how many there are, how hard they pedal, and for how long.
What is worth remembering is that as email was becoming mainstream, many busy scientists dismissed it as trivial, or thought it worthless, or wondered how they would find the time
In the early days of email I asked a fairly well-known scientist why she hadn’t yet got email. Her response was that there would be no point, as nobody she knew had email, so to whom would she talk, using this medium?
I think the same is true of Web2.0. People don’t think it’s necessary; don’t feel that there is enough critical mass such that they need to use it (and so everyone waits for someone to jump first); they are befuddled by the plethora of Web2.0 services and are waiting for the big player to emerge; they associate it with teenage gossip; and most of all they do not feel they need to invest the time learning about such things when they have many more things to do, any or all of which will yield more tanglible returns, more quickly. You can take a unicycling girrafe to water, but you can’t make it … er … um … dismount?
People can get in touch with me … at nine inches per nanosecond.
Precisely. In my day, we measured these things in furlongs per fortnight.
A very interesting post, Richard. I read the CSH Blog by David Crotty and thought it was very much on the money.
These are certainly early days for Web2.0 and science. It’s evidently here to stay but not at all clear how it will develop. I can understand the reticence of many people to get involved. As someone who is a late-comer to this ‘culture’ (no MySpace page, not a member of Facebook), I even hesitated to sign up to NN - and I haven’t advertised my membership among my colleagues (partly I’m not sure how they would react; partly I’m curious to see who discovers this online).
I confess I’m not really looking for scientific collaborators via this medium – that’s done at conferences or by email. Science is way too competitive for the openness that is intrinsic to the blogosphere – I watch my words carefully even when chatting at meetings (as a result of getting badly stung once). I’m more interested in this as a way of bringing the business of science to light and to life – both to share experiences, since it can sometimes be an isolated business (maybe one day I’ll tell the story of how I got stung) – but also as a way to try to reach a broader, non-scientific readership. I’m not sure how much the NN appeals to the wider public; though access is open, I suspect most people ‘here’ work in science in one way or another. Is there a policy of reaching outwards? Matt?
The light touch that comes with these enterprises is also appealing – good to show that scientists can have fun too (!) – but may be putting some people off. I don’t know if there’s any desirable way to legislate for that – maybe bloggers could tag their entries as ‘light’, ‘medium’ or ‘serious’ to act as a guide or filter to potential readers? Or is that just missing the point completely about blogs?
The local hubs part of NN is a very good development; in particular it’s a good way to advertise local events that might otherwise escape attention. For example, I hope to make it to both the Atom to Patterns exhibition and the upcoming half-day meeting on the Relevance of JD Bernal. Hopefully this type of benefit will soon be emitting from the new local hubs.
And finally, what can be done about the inevitable tendency to solipsism? (Note to self: must try to appear cleverer…!)
Lots of interesting points in the post and discussion.
A couple of thoughts from me:
In some ways, it is “too easy” to set up a group on NN. There are loads and loads of quiet groups there, which were set up by someone and not added to much. Maintaining a group takes commitment on the part of the person or people who set it up. Another issue I think with NN in particular is that if you are in a group, the search window is for “search groups”, if you are reading someone’s blog, the search window says “search blogs” etc. Maybe this is me being dumb, but I have taken to not using these windows and going to the global home page (where you get the generic NN search window) and starting searches from there. I could have misunderstood, but I seem to find that the best way to find “everything on NN about citations” or whatever my keyword is.
Second point, in this plethora of web 2.0 applications being launched (see Richard’s post, etc), perhaps the key will be not so much where users are interacting, but on all these networks being tied together via a search type function so that everyone can see what is going on in all of them. I am thinking of the pre-eminence of Technorati about 3 years ago, but how (say) Google blog search is now the way people look to find blogs becuase it is easier to search that way. Maybe we need a universal “social networks for scientists” search engine.
PS, Stephen, Timo Hannay, NPG’s web publishing director, says that David Crotty makes some good points, but the response must be to make web applications better, and more useful to scientists. He writes:
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. Hear, hear, I say.
Maxine – I agree with you (and Timo). I meant only that Crotty’s critique did a good job of highlighting the main weaknesses of the present situation. For sure the correct response is, how can we make it better?
It is easy to start a forum, but bloody hard work to keep it alive. Over on the LabLit forums, which has been going for about three years, we still have only a small core of dedicated active users. The lurker traffic numbers are enormous, but the people who post come and go, and the core group remains no more than a few dozen at any given time. At first I thought we were doing something wrong, but now I suspect that this might be the natural size of a good conversation, much as the coherence of a dinner party or book club with more than a dozen participants rapidly disintegrates.
Is NN useful to me? Socially, and for increasing my network of contacts and opportunities, it’s been brilliant. Scientifically, I just don’t have the time to use it to its full advantage, even when I’ve been given excellent research suggestions. I currently suffer from online fatigue: I seem to have reached the theoretical limit of the number of conversation and opportunities I can nurture at the same time. I doubt my blogs provide more than light entertainment to others.
I created a list of scientific community sites. Please let me know if you know more.
That’s a nice, attractively presented list, Bertalan.
Jenny, I think you may be right. Gavin Bell at NPG knows a lot about this—I am a bit of an amateur on this social network “stuff”, and a bit hazy (especially at 9 pm on a Sunday night after a glass of Rioja), but I think I am right in saying that he told me that even sites such as the Guardian blogs and the BBC, which get lots of traffic and comments, have relatively small communities of regular commenters. And based on my own personal experience of Nature Network (so far!) and my own (non-work) blog, a smallish core community is nice, everyone feels they “know” each other. Nature Network for me has the added benefit, compared with a site with masses of comments (eg Dilbert blog, Guardian, etc – the comments may be quite good but there is no way I’m wading through so many or even any) of being a “niche” site. That is, the common interests of the commenters and authors of the blog posts and forums, act as a glue. In the case of a blog, I read an article years ago called “building an online community” postulating that 25 is about the max for a “community”, where individuals comment regularly, the blogger can enter the conversation, and interesting discussions emerge. Once you have blogs that have many more commenters, that personal element becomes impossible to maintain given other demands on time, and the focus is lost.
On Nature Network, the most lively conversations seem to be more on the “social” and less on the “science” end of the scale, I agree. Social conversations with a scientific accent.
This “online fatigue” and general information overload we all experience is what makes me think the “answer” has to have something to do with the tools for each person to establish her or his own “personalised niche” from the many online options available – “prioritise and focus” being the key concepts. Chris Anderson of the Long Tail has written far more intelligently and persuasively about this than I ever could (particularly after aforementioned Rioja).
PS, Bob—watch your spelling (girrafes).
Mine’s a Cabernet tonight, Maxine – but I feel similarly. I am infinitely reassured by that figure of 25; and you are right: though I envy the Guardian’s stats, it doesn’t seem very friendly. So maybe I am doing something right.
There are, now I think about it (in the light of Maxine’s rioja), things that NN could do to improve matters w.r.t. groups, fora, whatnot.
cogitate
Yeah, the groups/forums stuff is about to get a significant overhaul and simplification…4-8 weeks time. Then navigation and layout improvements will follow. And, of course, the new local hubs, plus improvements to London/Boston.
This small community idea is something we hope to stimulate with the new local hubs. We already have a wonderful community going on in the global blogs. Can we replicate this at the local level, in many places? I think so.
I was wondering whether to write an entire blog post about it, but I’m wondering whether a person-centric interface (like Facebook) is better than an application-type such as you have here.
I might have to think about that a little more.
Interesting post – the kind that sends my brain off in all directions! Permit me a ramble:
Web 2.0 is certainly a fuzzy, ill-defined concept. There seem to be two viewpoints: content and technology. One feature of Web 2.0 is that content is user-driven. This is certainly the case at Nature Network. A second feature is that particular types of software facilitate content generation and distribution: AJAX, RSS and so on. I would suggest that technologically, Nature Network is not particularly Web 2.0. It’s more akin to the bulletin board style of website that we’ve all used for years.
Regarding “resistance” to web 2.0, I’ve always felt that it’s more ignorance than hostility. There seems to be a group of early adopters, found at every network, who get a lot out of it and the rest have simply never heard of it. For those who are participating, I think that “web 2.0 for science” is already working well.
Network burn-out: just network as you see fit. You don’t have to sign up for everything. This is where the “circle of trust” comes in: if something is recommended to me by someone on an existing network whose opinion I respect, I’m more likely to try it out. if it’s not working for you (you’ll know, because you won’t have used it for weeks) – just sign out and forget it. Some people seem to feel that it’s their fault if they don’t “get” a new social tool. The onus is on the tools to make themselves useful, not on you to use it. Think of it as web natural selection: tools spring up, compete for resources and live or die depending on their user base.
Why so many services? Well, they’re all good for different things. NN is great for general science discussion; Slideshare for presentations; OWW for sharing practical expertise; del.icio.us (and similar) for discovering resources, etc. We’re seeing a gradual move away from web “locations” towards “services”: in other words, you don’t care where things are hosted or even who runs them, so long as they fit into your personal workflow. This is “the cloud” and it’s going to be big.
I’ve said it elsewhere but will say it again here: the biggest problem with science and social networking is the concept of “Facebook for scientists”. It’s not what we need and it’s not how scientists interact. We need more research tools and less chat rooms. Really, it’s our data that need to be social, not ourselves and there are already slow, early steps in that direction.
That said – Nature Network could learn a lot from Facebook in terms of design and applications. Facebook is successful because it makes aggregation and sharing of diverse kinds of information very easy. Where it falls down is in redistribution of that information – but then it’s a closed network. A bit of fancy AJAX to get stuff in and RSS everywhere to get it out again and NN would be the business.
Great conversation! Richard – right on the money.
Actually, if I am on NN at all, it’s because of Richard, with whom I first crossed paths at SAB. Circle of trust, Neil, as you said.
Chat rooms will come and go spontaneously as the wind blows, the way comments on a blog usually dry up after a while. Superfluous threads and dead fora are par for the course and have been ever since BBS, Usenet and IRC. It doesn’t matter, since it’s all virtual. We need not be thrifty. As Maxine wrote, what does matter is how to search for the information you want – which threads are still active with potential bioinformatics collaborators, for instance. In my case, I don’t contribute to that thread right now because I don’t need anything, and no one has asked me for anything. Doesn’t mean I’m still not hanging around or can’t be contacted through the NN well after my initial proposition. But anyone needs to be able to find that information. One approach is to emulate the way old Usenet archives have been bought up by Google and can be perused with their familiar interface.
(An aside: the “search blogs” and “search people” here are not great in my opinion. Better to have a general search like in Thunderbird where you can narrow or enlarge the level of searchability. And I am not sure comments are searchable?)
I really identified with Stephen’s comment I haven’t advertised my membership among my colleagues (partly I’m not sure how they would react; partly I’m curious to see who discovers this online). That was precisely my approach – and why I started my blog under a handle – and why I think Richard is spot-on by making the analogy between the use of e-mail back when and the use of other formats of communication (I hate the term Web 2.0) currently. None of us like to be seen as major time-wasters by our peers. I was a bit embarrassed when my boss came upon my name and comments here because of Nature’s notoriety, although the initial embarrassment passed.
However, I do see ease of use of these newer media as a distinct adaptive advantage and well worth the investment of time.
This is all worth discussing at the Science Blogging 2008 meeting; do we need to be narrowly restricted to blogging alone? That is, why we blog – and what can set us apart from any other social blogger – is as important as what, no?
This is where the “circle of trust” comes in: if something is recommended to me by someone on an existing network whose opinion I respect, I’m more likely to try it out.
Personal recommendation is indeed important. I didn’t get into Facebook and NN just because they were there, but because I was nudged by Maxine and Matt respectively. Importantly, they didn’t say “try these things, they’re cool” and leave me to it. They noted specific aspects of these initially baffling websites that they thought would appeal to me. Maxine said I should join Facebook because I’d like the Bookshare application (I did); and Matt said I should look at NN because he thought I simply wouldn’t be able to resist blogging on it… and the rest is
hysteriahysteresishistory.The search function on NN is indeed pants. I’ve done some tests and been unable to find things I know are there. Matt, being allowed to search the Comments as well as the blogs would also help immensely. Or as Heather put it, just let us search everything.
Circle of trust is fine, but what happens if you still have too much to get through of an evening? I end up spread too thin, and feeling anxious that I’m perpetually missing something: the downside of Web 2.0. I wish rss could be more tailored than they currently are – but then, I am probably missing some functionality that already exists.
This is a great post, Richard. There’s lots of useful information here that I need to investigate and think about.
In the meantime, I thought it might be worth pointing out my favourite science networking site. AlzForum, as you can probably guess from the title, is a website for dementia researchers. It was launched in 1996 and although it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of more recent networking sites it certainly achieves its aim: “to promote debate, speed the dissemination of new ideas, and break down barriers across the numerous disciplines that can contribute to the global effort to cure Alzheimer’s disease.”
The site is editorially driven, in that it has a team of dedicated professionals who write news stories and highlight interesting papers for the community to comment on. For me where it really succeeds is in bringing lab-based and clinical researchers together. I go there to learn about the results of clinical trials that have recently been presented at conferences and to find out about new genetic discoveries. Some of the most well known names in AD research post comments there and I have picked up lots of useful information from those threads.
Networking sites will be used extensively in the months and years to come, in my opinion. But as Jenny pointed out earlier, to work they need moderators to drive the discussion by adding content and promoting discussion. Considering how much research money is pumped into diseases like Alzheimer’s, paying for a small team to foster discussion among the community must surely be considered a worthwhile investment.
Thanks James.
This editorial thing might bear further consideration. As you and Jenny say, a dedicated hard core of moderators/users is probably necessary, if not sufficient.
I talked with a
nother cynical bastardcolleague today about Web 2.0 and whatnot, and he’s got some fantastic ideas for using it for teaching, based on what he’s already doing in First Life™. That’s going to find its way into a subsequent post, as is his podcast-type idea for commentating on papers, exam questions, reviews. A lot there, and I need to cook it down a bit.Everyone. Thanks for your thoughtful comments. If I don’t respond immediately it’s not because it’s not worth my while: exactly the opposite, in fact0. I’m probably figuring out how to tie the disparate threads and ideas together, and might have to sit down with Cameron and hash something out.
0 Except for that hairy oaf Gee, of course.
I haven’t managed to discover your blog yet, Heather, though you’ve alluded to it a couple of times. I’m curious!
Neil, depends what you mean about Facebook being successful. Obviously, it is successful in terms of traffic, but I have joined a few groups on Facebook and they also seem extremely quiet (or are fronts for people advertising various products). I don’t think I’ve had any interesting conversations on Facebook groups that I’ve joined based on my interests (eg reading groups), whereas on NN I certainly have.
Chris Anderson and others have posted recently about Facebook not looking so rosy – mainly about the business model and lack of advertising revenue. Their arguments are that the future isn’t in a site like Facebook but in niche sites. I am hardly a typical web 2.0 user, but I don’t like Facebook (though I maintain an account there) as it does nothing useful for me. Nature Network, on the other hand, does: I like it very much as a user. (Disclaimer, I am employed by the company that produces Nature Network but I work in a different part of the company.)
For me, the bit of NN that makes it “2.0” to me is snapshot RSS feed to all the converstations going on in the blogs and forums among people who are my friends and contacts (even though I don’t like/understand those categories), and/or to which I have contributed. Also, the e-alerts to new posts and comments in the forums make it possible to participate in a conversation rather than having to spend time checking back (as one does for standalone blogs, on the whole—though that is changing.)
Matt, thanks for the news above. For my part, a more general search window on each NN page would be great. I also wish there was a clever way of linking together relevant conversations. For example, you and Corie set up the Ask The Editor forum for questions and answers about publication in Nature journals, but that forum has gone very quiet since its first few weeks (although I do post forum entries when relevant matters crop up), yet one sees lots of questions “out and about” on the Network that could be asked and discussed in that forum, and which would be nice to capture in it. This is not something that anyone can control (as far as I can see), either N N or the users, because the same topics crop up in lots of contexts over the network. Tags help, though you can’t tag everything (eg every reply to a blog post or forum topic), and it would be a bit anal to do this to most people.
This urge to link between relevant content is not only limited to a social network, of course, it applies to any online content….part of a much bigger conversation!
Hasty correction.
I wrote “and it would be a bit anal to do this to most people.”
Read:
“most people would find this a bit anal”.
snort
Sorry Maxine, the other meaning hadn’t even occurred to me until you pointed it out.
Just wanted to say that this interesting, informed and engaging conversation exactly typifies one of the elements that I was looking for in a science-oriented Web 2.0 thing!
That’ll teach me to write long comments and not check them sufficiently well before posting, Richard (it is a miserably wet bank hol monday, as others have pointed out).
Heather – just found your blog! (via the ScienceBlogging08 forum). I’ve subscribed.
Stephen, Agreed!
Richard, as always this is a very interesting discussion in your salon. My personal experiment in the context discussed here is our Good Paper Journal Club. There are a few technical aspects that will make using the journal club easier (e.g. better integration with Connotea, some Digg-style voting would also be nice), but basically it is about regular user contribution. I would like to talk about these issues at a certain upcoming science blogging conference, maybe this could also become a panel discussion on networking.
One thing I learned is that you need constant traffic, too little but maybe also too much will drive people away. And you need topics that are interesting for enough people. Nature Network and other science blogging sites – with a few exceptions – do not yet have the critical mass for discussions of specific research topics. And you need to start and maintain interesting discussions. Something that I’m still learning, but that Jenny and you are very good at.
Would there be a chance that you receive some funding from your university or an Australian funding agency for a virtual networking project? This is after all a great opportunity to overcome some of the disadvantages of your relatively remote location (scientifically speaking).
And Richard, what does it say about me that the other meaning did strike me (though, to my credit, I chalked it up to unfortunate wording before moving down a few lines)?
Yes. I recognize the utility of tags, but I’d much rather get automatic tags in some way, sort of like Amazon does with the “key phrases” – using perhaps the unusual words in the post, and keeping a manual feature by which one can correct or add to suggested automatic tags. Otherwise, I don’t like adding them in one bit on my own.
After all, “tags” is what we’ve been doing for many years when we submit “keywords” to journals for PubMed among other places – and we all know how random the choices are if they’re not a simple rehash of words already in the article title.
Re: my blog, well, I’ve updated my profile accordingly. Just another personal soapbox.
Stephen made a point that I want to comment on, he said that “Science is way too competitive for the openness that is intrinsic to the blogosphere”. I see too much competition as a problem that is impeding progress in science. Only things that people derive benefits from will continue to be done.
I was looking at Wikipedia the other day and came across the precise term to describe the kinds of rules that scientists want that is rules to deal with the Byzantine Generals problem.
That is the problem that occurs when a distributed system tries to take a collective action when some of the components of that distributed system are unreliable and in some cases are even treacherous and are actively trying to thwart the success of the entire system.
Originally I thought of that in the context of anti-science activists trying to destroy science education (such as the IDiots in the US). But it holds for people who are considered to be “scientists”, but are trying to “game” the system to derive more benefits than their scientific contributions warrant. Do we want to reward real scientific contributions or do we want to reward competitive prowess? I appreciate that there may not be a obvious distinction in some gray areas.
My experience is that peoples’ perceived need to be competitive interferes with their ability to interact positively with people doing good work that may be tangential to their own. The perception that “scientific importance” is a zero-sum and so any hint of importance attached to something not related to their work detracts from the actual importance of their work. This is a serious problem. Scientific fields end up chasing fads started by charismatic researchers who can spin the importance of their work well, not necessarily what are the most important directions.
The perceived need to be competitive is not something that any individual researcher can change unilaterally. That can only occur via a concerted action by enough of the scientific community that those remaining too competitive cannot thwart the change.
I’m not convinced by the argument made by Stephen and expanded upon by David,
Science is way too competitive for the openness that is intrinsic to the blogosphere
I mean, if science was that cutthroat no one would ever display a poster at a conference.
Similar to Stephen Curry, I am less interested in NN for brining in collaborators (there are already too many with too many ideas to follow up on) than with bringing science to la broader audience.
I agree it is remarkable and wonderful your faculty agreed to pay your way to the london conference!
The way the conference seems to be turning out, that’s going to be a major draw (looks like we have something sorted , at least in principle).
We’ll have to let Matt and Corie decide how much Web2.0 there’s going to be in London, especially if Cameron does something in Southampton (I’m intending to be there too, at least on the Monday).
But yes, Pamela. That my Faculty was willing is a good sign, and inspires me to communicate even more. So watch out :)
Neil, depends what you mean about Facebook being successful
It sure does. I’m not referring to their traffic, number of users, business model or whether people like them – there are certainly times when I don’t like Facebook much either.
The question is: does their site design facilitate usability? In other words given what Facebook is designed to do: (1) help you find people you know; (2) broadcast diverse information to those people – is it easy to do those things?
I would argue that it is, because the interface is (on the whole) well-designed, requires a minimum of clicks (due to AJAX) and is quite clear. Another key feature is the API, which allows application development and accessories such as browser extensions.
Another example – del.icio.us. It’s designed to capture URLs, tag them and make them easy to find later. It works well – again, principally because of the API. The del.icio.us Firefox extension is so good that you need never visit the website.
So my point is that you can learn from other applications in terms of design, usability and programming, even if you’re not interested in what they offer. NN is really rather “clunky” compared to other sites; that impacts usability and ultimately, how willing people are to participate. The basic idea is good though and I know you’re all listening to comment and working on improvements.
Any social network in the end is as useful as the people on it. In addition to the userbase, there are two things that make me stay on a service and use it (since I pretty much try as many as I can). One is usability, and two is extensibility. NN suffers quite a bit in both cases. Obviously, the quality of people on the site make me visit it often, but unlike FriendFeed or Facebook, I am not a regular visitor, because what I want to get done on those two is easily done, while it requires a lot of clicks here.
I feel NN is actually a goldmine for capturing collective intelligence and then doing something with it. An API would be really useful, given the quality of discussion here. This programmatic access is what web 2.0 really means to be, and that’s sorely missing.
As to why people don’t adopt them, there’s enough been said that I agree with. Labels to a degree are a convenience. I admit that science folks are often slower to adopt technology (heck I remember biologists who could barely turn on a computer back in the day)
To pick up a couple of threads without going too much off topic:
David – I agree competition can be counter-productive but it is a fact of scientific life. It arises in part from various super-egos playing the game skillfully but at root, I think, is the competitive funding mechanism that we have to contend with. While that is far from perfect (a topic for another extended conversation!), it does have the benefit of keeping us on our toes. Not to mention the competition one has to enter to get a permanent job…
Richard – Perhaps I overstated the matter, or understated the complexity, but I agree with you that – happily – competition is not the only fact of scientific life; indeed I have enjoyed many examples of generous idea-sharing conversations at poster sessions. We scientists are a curious, confused lot: mixed in with our competitive instincts is an underlying ethos of free exchange! That said, I am more circumspect with some than I used to be because we are unavoidably in competition with some of our colleagues. It would be a disservice to my students/postdocs if I were to prejudice their chances of publishing their results by revealing too much information pre-publication.
That’s why I would certainly hesitate to share pre-publication data online, and why I see the primary benefit of NN and its ilk as a forum to have a wider discussion about scientific issues. But I’m sure there are plenty of others out there who can see a way to making it work to stimulate collaboration in their areas…
@Deepak:
Any social network in the end is as useful as the people on it.
oh yes. And NN has a great resource in terms of people, it’s just, as you point out, somewhat clunky.
Stephen – funny you should say that. There’s a rather exciting result just hit the wires in our department, and I’ve been discussing with the boss about withdrawing a paper that’s in the stage of addressing the reviewers and bundling it up with the new data and sending it to Nature (I’m not a primary author; I just have an overall understanding of and interest in the project). I’m dying to blog about it, but am holding back for a while. ARGH!
Great post!
Richard, I believe that as technology stands at the moment it will be a long long time before anything web X.0 will replace conferences and personal face to face communication entirely from the research scene. I am definitely more than confortable working via email, skype or NN with my collaborators in Europe or the US but there are times in which only a face-to-face will do. Especially when it comes to starting a new project or discussing results.
Also I agree with David Whitlock that today’s science is too competitive for it’s own good. If we dare not post our latest research ideas for fear of having another scientist taking them from us we move away from collaboration to straight competition and this is unlikely to be the best for Science (with capital letters) as a whole.
Richard you missed the point that I was trying to make. There are different types of “competition”, other than being cut throat.
I think the May 22 edition of Futures paints an apocalyptic picture of “competition” based on social skills. When your primary competition is with other people, life is a zero sum game. What ever one person gains, someone else has to lose. When your primary competition is with reality, there are no limits.
Zero sum competition is (in my opinion) competition that doesn’t foster the creation of anything. It is an instance of a tragedy of the commons. Why should we encourage many researchers to work on the same topic when only a few of them (those who happen to publish first) end up not eating dirt?
Is there such a shortage of productive scientific topics to work on? No, there isn’t. My perception is that competition between scientists is fostered (to some extent) by non-scientists. I think it is fostered to make scientific competition the same kind of zero sum game that social competition is. There don’t need to be any losers in science. There is no shortage of things that need to be researched and understood.
I appreciate that there are limits to funding, and so those limited funds need to be distributed wisely. Turning up the level of competition selects for those with competition skills which are mostly social and unrelated to scientific prowess. Allocating funds to the most socially competitive scientists is not the way to get the best science done.
Richard’s example of his ongoing publication strategy is an example of competitive behavior that (in my opinion) has no scientific content. The data and inferences from a scientific project are the same no matter where they are published. Why is publication strategy so important to a scientist’s career? Because of “competition”. Effort put into such “competition” may advance an individual scientist’s career, it does not advance Science.
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Tell that to the (freshly-minted) PhD who is desperately looking for a job, and needs a high-profile/impact paper. Tell her she should publish in a ‘3rd rate’ journal.
That’s why I’m keeping quiet. (I quite agree it’s not good for Science with a capital ess, but do you really think I’m going to jeopardize her best chance for that ideal? That’s not my call).
Scientific striking advances may certainly occurs at interface, since SCIENCES, but also ART, are not separated, as thought the traditional, insufficient, cartesian, reductive Weltanschauung.Interestingly, has been demonstrated that in biological systems, besides local realm, does really exist also NON-LOCAL realm. As a conseguence, since last November, bedside diagnosing ha changed fundamentally. In one second, for instance, the diagnosis of healthy hearth has been made by physician…away 200 KM. from the patient! http://www.fcenews.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=
view&id=1316&Itemid=47
Wonderful. But surprisingly, such as wonderful scientific event has been almost overloked among too much news in this (mis)information WORLD!
Jenny wrote: It is easy to start a forum, but bloody hard work to keep it alive. Over on the LabLit forums, which has been going for about three years, we still have only a small core of dedicated active users. The lurker traffic numbers are enormous, but the people who post come and go, and the core group remains no more than a few dozen at any given time.
I think this is a general problem of human nature rather than specific to Web 2.0. In any organization, and in particular any voluntary organization, you’ll find that only a small fraction (less than a tenth) of the available people participate regularly in that organization’s activities such that they work to keep it going, by donating time and effort. Just look at your kids’ school parent-teacher association, church, sports club, whatever – whenever anything needs to be done, you always see the same old faces. Competition may or may not be a zero-sum game, but there are only so many hours in the day. 24, in my case (though I think Jenny has 36).
Except for that hairy oaf Gee, of course.
Timeo Danaos Et Dona Ferentes, which means that people who wear kilts shouldn’t walk barefoot in the land of the radioactive porcupine.
If I see any radioactive Histricomorpha, Henry, I’ll be sure to warn them.
Hystricomorpha, Richard. Honestly. Molecular biologists, eh?
David – You make some interesting points but I think you are clinging to a Platonic ideal: a noble effort certainly (!), but one that cannot be sustained in the real world. In reality science or Science, can only progress with resources and, if we are to dispense with competition as a way to allocate funding, how else is it to be done? By a committee of grandees perhaps who can decide what topics are significant and who is to work on them? I don’t think anyone would like to go down that route. You are certainly right that there’s a downside to competition – but what better mechanism is there?
Moreover, I think there is a healthy side to competition in science. We all have to try to carve out a niche for ourselves, somewhere where we can make a real contribution. We do that by examining closely what is going on in the published literature and searching for an entry point in a topic that is fundable and publishable. To that extent science is very much about user-generated content and is perhaps the original Web 2.0 enterprise, pre-dating the internet by several hundred years (to return ultimately to the topic…)!
With my deep insider knowledge of Nature Publishing Group ;-), I think it fair to hazard a guess that the more the users “use” NN —set up and maintain groups useful to them, run interesting blogs, and so on, the more NPG will invest in improving the service. I’m seeing the company put more and more into its various online activities, many of which are free to users, and I think that the growth of the network depends to quite a significant extent on the people using it—numbers and uses to which it is put. I agree it has technical limitations right now, but equally I am impressed by the variety and quality of the contributions – which makes me want to come back to it. For my part, I hope that is the case for an increasing number of others. And NN will grow in positive directions as a result, and justify even more technical investment.
By the way, Martin, I think you are too modest (above, somewhere way up) about your own contributions to NN, which I always find thoughtful and worth reading.
On-topic has never been particularly relevant round these parts, Stephen…
Interesting, Maxine. I’ll contact you off-list (raises eyebrow mysteriously)
Stephen, I agree with you. Competition keeps humanity sharp, no matter the endeavor. It’s a fact of life that nature is red in tooth and claw, and if there wasn’t incentive to push ahead, people would probably get lazy. (I’m thinking of a certain European country where the lab heads are paid for life whether they work or not…)
Do we really want all potential scientists to succeed in the business? Or only the top x per cent, the most excellent and dedicated and (dare I say) hungry, that can be sustained?
Hmmm. I’m now quite worried about sharing a panel with Dr Rohn. I’m wondering if I should bring along a few rare steaks in case she gets (dare I say) hungry?
And a chair and a lion tamer’s whip, perhaps?
Richard, you should consider a career as an anteater tamer
OK Richard. A few more people have now joined the lonely Sydney network. Stop calling Sydney the boonies it just reveals you’ve never been near the actual boonies.
For values of “few” that equal “2”. Heh.
No – no more! I want the smallest hub on NN!
Sadly one of the 2 spokes in your ‘hub’ appears to be in Singapore.
Is two enough for a hub? MattB tells me there are more page impressions from Sydney than can be accounted for by just me (and you, presumably).
I know they’re out there. I can hear them breathing.
Hmmm. I’m now quite worried about sharing a panel with Dr Rohn. I’m wondering if I should bring along a few rare steaks in case she gets (dare I say) hungry?
And a chair and a lion tamer’s whip, perhaps?
Don’t worry, Dr Grant. I only bite my arch nemeses.
“arch-nemeses”? You have more than one?
Hey, it’s lonely at the top.
Richard wrote: There’s a rather exciting result just hit the wires in our department, and I’ve been discussing with the boss about withdrawing a paper that’s in the stage of addressing the reviewers and bundling it up with the new data and sending it to Nature. I’m dying to blog about it, but am holding back for a while. ARGH!
Richard – perhaps you could keep a record of this developing process and blog about it once it is ‘safe’ to do so. I’m sure it would make for interesting copy! Nature’s ‘Making the Paper’ feature is a nice development but doesn’t necessarily have the space to go into all the juicy details that bring the reality of science to life. I’m guessing that you may already have had this thought…
(Thanks for bringing it vaguely back on topic, Stephen)
Yes, you’re right. I should write it all down somewhere and then bring it out for public consumption when the dust has settled. Much like I should have done for the spaghetti story, in fact.
Wargle! The biggest problem with Web2.0 is that you go away for a day and a massive conversation has just passed you by. There’s been lots out on the blogosphere in response to this post and I will probably add to the noise at some point but I just wanted to touch on a few things. You can take my usual open stuff etc spiel to be done (read it elsewhere).
But Richard’s comments about this Big New Thing™ and the problem of recording the process bring up a key point about recording. Even if you don’t make everything public immediately there is a real value in making sure a record is made that can be released later.
I think Neil has the right end of the stick. These tools are so diverse that if they don’t do it for you don’t use them. David Crotty has asked the question elsewhere (and here ) whether the notion of social networks even makes sense in science. This is isn’t after all about making friends, or a competition to see how many Nobel prize winners I can list as contacts. It is about filtering and processing information which is not what Facebook is about really.
In my view Web2.0 should make sense for science but it doesn’t because we can’t resource the process of getting the content out there. Until people get credit for contributions to commenting or filtering or depositing data or protocols it won’t be seen as a useful use of time and until lots of people are doing it it won’t be a useful use of time. So we need to change the credit culture – if necessary by persuading funders that this type of record is what they are paying for so it needs to be made available in some form.
Re your last paragraph, Cameron: and for peer-reviewing.
Peer review is an interesting model, because it does work. People do it, despite not being credentialized for it, I think as part of their contribution to the advancement of science. If that sounds too idealistic, then how about: they do it becuase they are part of the circle of authors, reviewers, readers, scientists—and it all keeps going if everyone plays their part at all these roles.
Whatever the reason, peer-review has been going for donkeys years without peer-reviewers being publicly feted, or their cv or career improved as a result, or their bank balance spruced up, on the whole. (Journals appreciate their reviewers very much indeed, but could do more to thank them.)
So why is peer-review such an entrenched process, but (quoting Cameron) contributions to commenting or filtering or depositing data or protocols not? Are there any lessons to be learned here?
‘So why is peer-review such an entrenched process, but (quoting Cameron) contributions to commenting or filtering or depositing data or protocols not?’
My guess is that commenting, filtering and peer reviewing essentially boil down to the same thing, except (journal) peer review is by far the most established and the most organized and therefore the most valuable. There are thus less incentives to bother with everything else done “for free” if one is already doing peer reviews.
So I think a practical course of action is to think of something that can be better than peer review on paper and in practice, in terms of organization and recognition. Randomly providing comments by random people at random places is definitely not that IMO. Or, as Cameron has said and something I completely agree with: find a way to reward them for doing “lesser jobs” that still are valuable, but not nearly as valuable, recognized and organized as the (journal) peer review system.
As for depositing (raw) data, I think that has more to do with a lack of organization/structure, not necessarily a lack of perceived value. Scholars may simply not be aware of those repositories, assuming they exist, I’m not very up to date on the subject of open data initiates, either. Although I haven’t done anything yet that would warrant using them.
Or if I can ask the question another way. Why is refereeing rewarded? Or perhaps; why do heads of department not discourage refereeing given the cost implications in terms of staff time in an environment of increasing costs?
I think the answer lies in two places. One is simply tradition. The system works, as Maxine says, and no-one really wants to break it, certainly not those who have done well by it. The second is that refereeing is a route to journal editorships which is a recognised currency of status in academia.
In the current UK Research Assessment Exercise one of the pieces of information required was ‘evidence of esteem’ for which journal editorships were definitely an item to include. ‘Regular commenter at Nature Networks’ or ‘Made 1200 edits at OpenWetWare’ probably wouldn’t cut it. The point I would make is that doing those things can lead to invitations to speak at meetings, invitations to write articles or opinion pieces, which could be included as ‘evidence of esteem’ so there are still benefits.
Stephen, I always thought that the “real world” was the one that we scientists were trying to understand. The social and political world is the one that we humans generate for ourselves and so it has many degrees of freedom that we humans can manipulate and change at will. Some Platonic ideals, such as the ones on not making up “data” and on not copying someone else’s work without attribution, are taken pretty seriously. Why are other Platonic ideals not taken seriously too? Only because it is not convenient or advantageous to some to do so.
To be sure, Science is not the only social and political endeavor where some find conforming to Platonic ideals inconvenient or disadvantageous. Whole sectors of society are devoted to attempting to enforce the Platonic ideals of respect for property, respect for personal autonomy, and respect for individual physical integrity on individuals who seek to advantage themselves by not doing so.
As an engineer, when I design a piece of equipment I like to first adopt a Platonic ideal conceptualization of that piece of equipment and then modify the design according to other constraints. This lets me be aware of the trade-offs that I am making when I modify the design to optimize according to the engineering truism; good, fast, cheap; pick any two.
There is a very real danger that when only things that can be quantified are rewarded that will eventually lead to all non-rewarded things disappearing.
If we adopt the “competition” model that Jenifer suggests, where do we stop? A “really dedicated” scientist wouldn’t stop at 40 hours per week, or 50, or 60, or even 80.
Should we reward the PI who demands 80 hours of work from his/her post docs more than the one who lets them “get away” with only 60?
The most important research is (in my opinion), not “the answer” that many people are looking for. If many people are working on it, eventually “the answer” will be found. Who finds “the answer” first is a detail that is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of Science. It is the fields where no one is working that are most important to start working on. Which ones are those? We don’t know because no one is working on them.
The first researcher who opens up a whole new field of study may have accomplished more in a single day than teams of researchers may accomplish in their careers.
The development of the knockout mouse is a relevant example.
The peer reviewers of the proposal gave it a low score and if it had not been successful in 4 years, the project would have ended. We now know that the technique is so valuable that it would have been worth many times the effort to develop.
I think it is unreasonable to expect people to “bet” their careers, their lives, their families, etc. that their research proposals will be successful on such-and-such a time frame.
Peer review. The thing is, we do get something in return. We get our papers reviewed by our peers. It’s a social contract, rather like paying taxes to enjoy the streets being swept clean cough cough. Except I come and sweep your street, and you sweep mine.
It’s an interesting economic model, actually, that maybe someone smarter than me should think about.
And peer review would also be a valid study for a sociological study. How are those who abuse the system punished, if they are?
The competition vs Platonic ideal argument is becoming interesting, and I may have some ideas about that, but this comment is not big enough to accommodate them.
David – what a shame there isn’t a web 2.0 equivalent of a bar where these conversations could be thrashed out in real time (with appropriate lubrication)! I agree with a very great deal of what you say but suspect I am coming at the topic with a different philosophical standpoint. I don’t want to reply in detail – I’d like to leave the floor clear for others to jump in – but just want to make a couple of brief points.
Yes, there is a danger that competition will skew people’s efforts, that scientists will work themselves into the ground, that in the grand scheme of things who discovers what is irrelevant. And yet, to take just the last point – the discoverer surely has the right to take great pride in their achievement, and that aspect is relevant, does matter (and is a positive driver of competition?). Having worked so hard, we much take what consolation the enterprise has to offer. As you say, a core part of science is the social endeavor (whence the politics!); it is an all too human activity, beset by human frailties but also, despite the flaws in the process, one of our grander achievements. Of course we should aim to address these systemic flaws, but how would you propose to do that without some element of competition?
You last remark (I think it is unreasonable to expect people to “bet” their careers, their lives…) resonates strongly with me. I don’t bet on horses or cards but I was conscious from day one that I was certainly taking a gamble by plotting a ‘career’ in science. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable. I think life is like that – risky. That sounds a bit glib but I really don’t mean it to be. Cheers! Ah, my glass is empty – your round, I think?
what a shame there isn’t a web 2.0 equivalent of a bar where these conversations could be thrashed out in real time.
I hope that those participating in this fascinating discussion will be able to attend Science Blogging 08, so we can do as Stephen suggests, even with lubrication.
PS I see from the Nature Network homepage this morning that this blog is the “most active” on the network. Congratulations, Richard!
Lubrication is always good.
Thank you, Maxine. I’d like to thank all my commenters, without whom none of this would have been possible. I should also thank Henry McGee for the use of his unicycle, and Jennifer Rohn for whipping the blogosphere into a frenzy.
You’re all beautiful. I’m quite overwhelmed.
Actually, Stephen, there is. You could iChat, or if you’re oldskool, IRC. You have to supply your own, em, lubrication, though.