Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? forum: topic
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Social networks for scientists
Pedro Matos
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 13:03 UTC
Social networks for scientists are still quite recent and in the process growing. However the dispersion of users among these several networks and the poor willingness of scientists to embrace these services decrease the social power and usefulness of each network.
Here, I listed many of them:
- Nature Network
- ResearchGATE
- SciLink
- Epernicus
- LabRoots
- BiomedExperts
- Academia.edu
- Laboratree
- myExperiment
- Sci-mate
- LinkedIn (?)
And the more reference manager oriented ones:
So, what do you think about this topic? Do you use any of these or know other networks? Do you find it useful? What do you think a social network for scientists should provide to be successful?
Updated 26 May 2009 16:54 UTC
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The problem, as I see it, toward adoption of a Scientific Social Community (SSC; Zhang et al. 2008), is that scientists are trained to be independent. In later years one is rewarded for being collaborative, but that goes against years/decades of training in independence. This was highlighted by the NIH as one of the major Roadblocks to development and implementation of translational science: lack of collaboration, especially between basic & clinical scientists.
most scientists don’t want to use something like SciMate because they don’t trust/can’t trust other people with their work. It’s hard enough to get a collaboration to work with the lab down the hall, let alone across country. So there is little evidence of successful collaboration in the Web2.0 milieu. Without out that foundation I see great impediments to adoption.
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I was under the impression that Martin or Eva also made a blog post compiling many of these and other science social networking sites in the last year or two. (I’ll leave attempting to search the blogs for the posts to others.)
On LinkedIn, there was the following discussion in April, launched by one of the directors of Sigma Xi (an American professional scientists’ society) and hoping to take members’ temperature with yes-no responses: “The Sigma Xi Board of Directors will meet April 30-May 2 and consider a proposal to launch a new online professional collaboration and engagement platform similar to Linked In and Facebook. This new platform would be available to Sigma Xi members at no charge and is designed to be easy to use. If approved, this new social/professional networking tool would give each member the choice of automatically exposure through three separate online network outlets that the member may chose to populate and use or not.”
Despite the request for yes-no answers, many people, particularly those with doubts, added their observations or explanations. I think the measure was slated for the time being, in the end, and this poll yielded YES 49 vs. NO 75 votes. Among the comments:
I honestly do not see the value add over what is currently available. My sense is, there is already an over-proliferation of these sites.
seems redundant
Conditional “yes, if” the delivered functionality is better than what currently exists.
The American Chemical Society tried a similar concept and the response has been quite modest. I’m not sure it has reached more than a miniscule fraction of the membership.
Linked-In and other professional networking sites are excellent when well-used, but the signal:noise ratio is likely to be higher (for my interests) in a [scientists only] network.
Alternative: would it be possible to layer these services on an existing system, thus avoiding redundancy? [A major advantage of Facebook, which is largely perceived though as a site for personal rather than professional interests.]
don’t want yet another website to have to babysit
The are already plenty of tools to cover all the functions described. Why reinvent the wheel in a proprietary, closed system? Use the tools that already exist.
only if I can use LinkedIn or Facebook as my “portal” into this new site. That is, my life can be simpler!!
redundant, time consuming, costly to Sigma Xi. I feel it’s better to use existing sites (LinkedIn and Facebook) and add a bit more content to them.
I don’t have time or desire to interact with yet another social network (I’m already on several), especially as this one would include only a (relatively small) subset of my colleagues.
I can’t keep up with the ones to which I already belong.
question whether it would even be used.
What I would support is greater record keeping at the national [society] level to know the potential expertise of the members so more people are utilized instead of relying solely on the few that always volunteer.
A blogger recently coined the phrase “messaging fragmentation” where one can quickly have too many social networking channels and defeat the purpose behind SN. We’re almost there already.
I will agree, however, with the above suggestion of testing this idea out on a few people to see what kind of legs it grows. [supporting the concept of beta testing]
I believe that multiple sites is a good thing. It’s like having multiple chapters of an organization in different places. Existence of a diversity of similar sites is the reality. Finding ways for such sites to connect and cooperate is the challenge.
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I think the use of this kind of software is very valuable for scientists. I am currently using Papers as a reference manager, and I am very satisfied. Before, I spent many time saving papers in several folders, renaming papers, renaming the folders, organizing collections into subfolders… now I can save me the time and work, doing the same automatically inside Papers. I am trying also Mendeley, but I think it is a little bit slower and incomplete.
I disagree in classifying Labmeeting as reference manager-oriented. In my lab, we are starting to use Labmeeting, and also can save us time and work, facilitates communication and discussion of papers. Also, I can get in touch with some friends and colleagues. Obviously Labmeeting can be improved… The use of Labmeeting is still poor, but I think that this tool can be very useful to improve communication.
For social networking, I am trying SciLink, and also Nature Networks, of course. I am setting up to myself a sort of “suite” of networks and programs. For now, I believe it is the best choice of you can explore fully the power of social networks for scientists. -
But Pablo, as useful as Papers is, it’s not ‘social software’. I’m not even sure that it allows the kind of social stuff this thread is all about.
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Thanks for the opinions posted here!
Along this and other online discussions one ideia seems to pop: scientist don’t yet (or only a minority) care about online social networks or other Web 2.0 technologies for their benefit.
Thoughts about this:- scientists with an established scientific career and colaborations (correlates with age) don’t really find it useful for them;
- there’s a preconceived idea that social networks means myspace, facebook and hi5, which cannot be seen as serious or relevant for scientific work;
- email is deeply rooted in the habits of online communication, many tasks could be done efficiently using web 2.0 services but people just don’t realize that (resistance to change);
- … (you suggest ;)
Scientific investigation is all about collaborating and communicating, so I found intriguing that scientists aren’t that keen on adopting tools that would help them connect.
Let me point out one feature (already implemented in some) that could make the bridge between online and real activity: Events (meaning scientific conferences). By allowing social networks to congregate conference attendants in online groups could stimulate pre-discussions and attract more interested people to join. It would also facilitate contact management and feedback in the aftermath of the conference.Also added Sci-mate and Linkedin to the main list. Linkedin as a general professional social network can be a starting point to generate your online contact list. It has a number of members “comparable” to facebook let’s say and I think you can easily find a scientist profile on linkedin than on the other niche scintific networks.
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I get your point, Richard. My mistake… Of course, some of these tools focused in social networking also focuses in data management, reference handling and/or collaboration. My idea bringing Papers into the discussion was mainly to say that we can evaluate the usefulness of a service separately from its usefulness as data/reference/collaboration management. I also tried to argue that, in my opinion, Labmeeting is more than a reference manager. But, as a social network service, it is still very poor.
About Laboratree: I tried to use it, but I find the page a little bit slow. Considering the small free time in science, I believe that one of the valuable traits of a social tool is the performance in terms of velocity and the simplicity. SciLink could be improved, and is very similar to Facebook, which can facilitate the transition to a more “general purpose” to a more “science oriented” social networking tool.
I agree with Pedro. Scientists are not so interested in these tools. Even here, in Chile, so far from the “scientific hubs”, colleagues are far from being excited about this. I believe strongly that these tools could help us, here, to connect with scientists all over the world, and facilitate collaboration. -
@Pablo: Labmeeting and Mendeley have a social networking component in development, but have a reference manager features (mendeley also has desktop client), that’s why i listed in the reference manager “oriented”, but I do consider them more than that. Here in Portugal is the same, scientists are just not engaged online. Thanks for your opinions!
BTW, Mendeley just released a new version (0.6.5) and Labmeeting released a new side service called Autocite, very useful to find links for texted references (http://www.labmeeting.com/papers/autocite/form). -
@Pedro: email is deeply rooted in the habits of online communication, many tasks could be done efficiently using web 2.0 services but people just don’t realize that (resistance to change).
Did email explode on to the scene or did it phase in gradually. I mea that as a genuine comment; I can’t remember! I know i got my first email account sometime in the 90s when I was at Uni, but I don’t think I seriously checked my email until almost graduating in 1997. I didn’t use it extensively until I was at Grad School.
I ask, because I wonder if once we over an inertia-barrier if we’ll see more adoption of forums and wiki-like environments. The academic unit I work for/with is building and developing these sorts of things for my campus her at UT, Memphis. I’ve just examined some of the usage logs of our Faculty discussion sites (look at names, not content!), and it seems some users visit frequently, others never.
With the National Postdoc Association, we have our own discussion rooms for Committee members and Board members, but only half the Committees of the Membership are using their space and I managed to finally finagle one of the Board Governance Committees I’m on into using the site for discussion, so as to avoid endless email streams or pointless teleconferences. And these are “young”/hip/trendy scientists, not even the full Prof Grey-beard we imagine never exploiting Web2.0 technology.
I’ve found that a lot of it is inertia-barrier (just get someone stated and once they’re up and running it’s OK. But this is impossible to achieve at a critical mass unless you get a peer-teacher interaction), as well as ‘out of sight, out of mind’. New technologies get adopted, but unless they are used/referenced almost constantly they get forgotten quickly. Something needs to be become referential, or enter the common lexicon, to stay in the forefront of peoples minds.
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And please forgive atrocious spelling & grammar. Am rushing!
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Dear Pedro and other members,
I’m hoping to be useful by sharing another networking link for scientists and inventors of the new age. This association runs annual competitions for innovative and prospective entrepreneurs. Their First Round function that I this April gathered many young talents. Quite an inspiring bunch.
But one can find all the details here: New Ventures BC
His GMAT Study Group
Her site for Vancouver Events
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