Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? Forum

So you use Nature Networks, but what do you really think of the impact of Web2.0 on research? Below we pose a few questions to get the discussion going.

  • Social Not Working?

Web 2.0 gives many opportunities for user participation but are these only being embraced within specific interest communities? What is the motivation for a busy research scientist to invest time and effort in Web2.0 approaches, even as a consumer? What do contributors of content get out of it?

  • Power to the People

Is there a darker side to the pluralist ethos of Web2.0 collective intelligence i.e. the ‘power of the crowd’? For many scientists attribution of ideas or findings – whether through formal citation or other means – is key. Do Web2.0 approaches which anonymise and collate lead to issues around selective interpretation, validity and plagiarism? If I have access to the internet and something to post about science, does that make me a ‘scientific author’?

  • Gated Communities

With a rapid growth in contributions of personal as well as professional information posted to networking sites, what are the privacy risks to researchers? Do current attitudes to consent and confidentiality apply in the blogosphere? Will increasing use of Web2.0 as a marketing platform create a backlash of ‘gated’ web communities?

  • Mind Your Language

Is Web3.0 a semantic pipe-dream or a true vision for the future of the web? How do folksonomies become ontologies, and do they need to? Are controlled vocabularies and taxonomies the future for wide-scale researcher engagement with Web3.0 or is it all about the “data web”?

  • Here Today.com

Both commercial and non-commercial Web2.0 enterprises fall by the way-side because they fail to reach a critical mass of participation. Do Web2.0 services automatically get better the more people use them? What is the key to sustainability through user engagement? Is it a case of evolution and growing a ‘long tail’ to survive?

TalkScience at the British Library in September will be debating some of the issues above. Keep an eye out for the notice on this group to attend this free event.

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