Science 2.0: Difference between revisions
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URL = http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk | URL = http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk | ||
=Definition= | |||
Richard Poynder, summarizing Murray-Rust: | |||
"an online interactive environment where a great deal of the information used is more likely to have been discovered, aggregated and distributed by software and machines than it is by humans; an environment where data are constantly used and reused — pumped through new tools like RSS feeds, and displayed in mashups, wikis, and the various other tools developing around Open Notebook Science." | |||
(http://poynder.blogspot.com/2008/01/open-access-interviews-peter-murray.html) | |||
=Description= | =Description= | ||
Revision as of 08:20, 27 January 2008
= researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science.
URL = http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk
Definition
Richard Poynder, summarizing Murray-Rust:
"an online interactive environment where a great deal of the information used is more likely to have been discovered, aggregated and distributed by software and machines than it is by humans; an environment where data are constantly used and reused — pumped through new tools like RSS feeds, and displayed in mashups, wikis, and the various other tools developing around Open Notebook Science." (http://poynder.blogspot.com/2008/01/open-access-interviews-peter-murray.html)
Description
From an article in Scientific American by Mitchell Waldrop :
"Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive.
"Science happens not just because of people doing experiments, but because they're discussing those experiments," explains Christopher Surridge, editor of the Web-based journal, Public Library of Science On-Line Edition (PLoS ONE). Critiquing, suggesting, sharing ideas and data--communication is the heart of science, the most powerful tool ever invented for correcting mistakes, building on colleagues' work and creating new knowledge. And not just communication in peer-reviewed papers; as important as those papers are, says Surridge, who publishes a lot of them, "they're effectively just snapshots of what the authors have done and thought at this moment in time. They are not collaborative beyond that, except for rudimentary mechanisms such as citations and letters to the editor."
The technologies of Web 2.0 open up a much richer dialog, says Bill Hooker, a postdoctoral cancer researcher at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Portland, Ore., and the author of a three-part survey of open-science efforts in the group blog, 3 Quarks Daily. "To me, opening up my lab notebook means giving people a window into what I'm doing every day. That's an immense leap forward in clarity. In a paper, I can see what you've done. But I don't know how many things you tried that didn’t work. It's those little details that become clear with open notebook, but are obscured by every other communication mechanism we have. It makes science more efficient." That jump in efficiency, in turn, could have huge payoffs for society, in everything from faster drug development to greater national competitiveness." (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk)