Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working?: topic
This is a public forum
Open notebook science: grand idea or overwhelming detail?
Maxine Clarke
Sunday, 29 June 2008 18:26 UTC
One view, censored version, via DrugMonkey:
“People are still going on about the completely absurd idea of “opening” working lab notebooks by publishing them on the Web? Who wants to read someone else’s lab notebook? I want to see digested, processed, analysed data, with bad experiments thrown out. Maybe bloggers have the time to wade through the piles of xxxx in other people’s lab notebooks to find the meaningful nuggets, but working scientists do not. And if we are talking about publishing curated, analyzed datasets on the Web independently of peer-reviewed publication, well this ain’t a “notebook”, and calling it “Open Notebook” is stupid.”
The other view (via The Quantum Pontiff):
“A topic of much discussion I see in the Science 2.0 world (it’s like the Renaissance, but with more Javascript!) is the idea of Open Notebook Science. In one version of Open Notebook Science, one simply opens up ones research notebook (or other equivalent) to outside access. For an example see Garrett Lisi’s research wiki. This is, of course, the grand ideal of science at its best: the question for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
What is Open Notebook Science?
”...research already in progress is opened up to allow labs anywhere in the world to contribute experiments. The deeply networked nature of modern laboratories, and the brief down-time that all labs have between projects, make this concept quite feasible. Moreover, such distributed-collaborative research spreads new ideas and discoveries even faster, ultimately accelerating the scientific process.”
See also this posting at Nature Precedings, by Jean-Claude Bradley.
Updated 29 June 2008 18:34 UTC
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
DrugMonkey is right – it would be really boring to look through thousands of pages of online lab notebooks but (s)he’s missed the point in that humans (at least outside your lab) were never meant to be the principal consumers of this stuff.
Open notebooks only really become interesting once they’re aggregated, timestamped and indexed. You’ll use a search engine to find the information you’re interested in or be alerted to it automatically by new filtering tools.
No xxxx wading required.
-
I think this discussion thread raises some interesting issues on a range of topics that tie in with the opening questions that Sarah posted about the the ‘data web’, robust mechanisms for enabling discovery of relevant information, and potential issues around selective interpretation. On the latter, I think most researchers would agree that peer review ain’t great but it provides at least some level of quality assurance. How many ‘open notebooks’ provide the facility to openly question validity of content? Don’t get me wrong, I have been an advocate of data sharing for years but this has to include access to underlying primary data as well as interpretation (obviouly the boundaries will vary across discplines) to promote open scientific enquiry.
-
Maxine,
I posted a detailed reply on my blog . -
I think I mentioned elsewhere about being aggravated by psuedonymous blather. You just found it. I think Jean-Claude’s response is to the point and on the money (but then I would wouldn’t I? :)
We go around this loop all the time and its a bigger issue than just lab notebooks – its the issue that people have with the whole web. Its full of rubbish isn’t it? Well yes, but through connections with people or tools or sites that you trust it is eminently possible to find the gold dust, and more importantly it is getting easier to (semi-)automatically pull it altogether.
Just one point on attribution. The blog is called Drug Monkey, the post in question was from PhysioProf, one of two authors on that blog.
-
Thanks for your responses, Jean-Claude and Cameron. To echo Allan’s point above, I did not post this entry as a meaningless, straw-man type of post, but rather to draw attention to the topic as one of those to be discussed at the meeting in September, for which this group was set up, and to interest other Nature Networkers in the topic.
It is very useful to have your additional thoughts on Open Lab Notebooks at your blog link, as well as the Nature Pecedings document to which I linked in my post, Jean Claude. Maybe you or Cameron will be able to come to the British Library talk in London. -
I’ve emailed Allan about the talk and am hoping I might be able to make it. Looks like an interesting potential discussion certainly. Just as a shameless plug I’m giving a Web2 and science talk at the UKOLN Institutional Web Managers Workshop in a few weeks that I think is going to be web streamed live and I am going to attempt to respond both to comments from the floor as well as any coming in from outside via twitter/friendfeed if that is of interest
-
I hope you can make it, Cameron, and I will try to follow your upcoming talk via web—thanks for the link.
-
Cameron – that would be great if you’ll take questions by FriendFeed – I should be available that day to watch your presentation online
-
All of this will obviously depend on network connectivity and things working properly but will try to announce on my blog what the connections and sites will be.
-
Jean Claude/ Cameron
Please do flag as an ‘event’ on this forum as well.
Allan
Results
-
