Colin Ashe › Likes

"Remarkable" is another beguiling word. I have "nowish" tendencies, too. - Michael Nielsen

So you're trying to get rid of what you love most? You're a weird bunch. ;) - Meryn Stol

Definitely definitely. Sadly, it's also a word I always misspell. - John Dupuis

I can imagine "very" to be overused easily, but "will"? You could replace it with "should", because I believe that what should happen, will happen, but I believe you're writing a book about "The future of Science", not about a desired state of affairs (which in my opinion comes down to the same, but that's probably a subject big enough for a book in itself). I expect a book about the future to use "will" very often. - Meryn Stol

"will" can often be omitted entirely.Perhaps 70% of my uses can be. - Michael Nielsen

Can you give an example of that? - Meryn Stol

In chapter 7, we will discuss cases where ... - Michael Nielsen

Oh yes, please kill the "academics speak". :) I hate these kind of introductory chapters anyway. I'd start off with a story. Pull the reader in directly. - Meryn Stol

Meryn, that's not a quote. There is no academic introductory chapter. - Michael Nielsen

Michael, give a better example then. :) I asked for an example of what you wanted to avoid. I'm glad you're already past the "academics speak" stage. :) Did I - for a moment - think too low of you? - Meryn Stol

My crutch is "additionally". This is why good editors are crucial to any writing, science-related or not. - Chris Miller

'should' is another good one - Jodi Schneider

Sometimes you need to equivocate. However, I have a tendency do it by using the word however too often. - Matt Leifer

"interestingly" makes me itch. - Chris Cotsapas from Nambu

I suffer most of these - "interestingly" (probably not if you need to point it out), "however", and sometimes "should". "Additionally" isn't in my antilexicon, thank goodness! - Michael Nielsen

My biggest writing tic is "really," as in "Quantum mechanics is really about measurements of the world, not bunnies made of cheese." I referred to the delete-needless-words edits of the book-in-production as "really sweeps." Sentences beginning with "So,..." are another tic, but that's a general academic scientist phenomenon. - Chad Orzel

Life science papers are often full of "interestingly" and "remarkably"; almost always a sign that the observation is neither :-) - Neil Saunders

"Really" is one of mine, too, Chad. Another is "actually" which I think I must have recruited to replace "really." Now I'm trying to cut down on both. Also, I write way to many sentences that are variations on the construction of two dependent clauses joined by "but." I'm sick of hearing them in my head. (I almost wrote "I'm really sick of hearing them.") - Rebecca

I've found myself writing sentences, then cutting them in half once I review them. I use a lot of random extra words for no apparent reason. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Has anyone read Stephen King's On Writing? It made me want to don a pith helmet and go adverb-hunting. - Chris Cotsapas

Chris - King's fiction doesn't do much for me, but I greatly enjoyed On Writing. - Michael Nielsen

Agreed on the fiction - I think I've read one book (apart from OW). I'm a swords and dragons sort of boy. But he *is* very good at what he does (and prolific). - Chris Cotsapas

An Elmore Leonard tip for improving writing is to avoid adverbs. It helps improve technical and research writing also. - Bill Anderson from twhirl

I've edited my manuscripts to be free of silly things like "interestingly" and "will have been" only to find that my PI put them back in in a subsequent edit. He likes the verbiage, that man. - Mr. Gunn

My big problem seems to be with starting sentences. I seem to rely upon a too-small set of sentence starters, then sprinkle them liberally. Also, I use the words "indeed" and "inherently" far too often. - Christopher Granade

I occasionally have too many "[Next, ] w/We [then] did [...]" sentences strung together, which is clunky. Better than "It was discovered [...]", though. - Chris Cotsapas

definitely, awesome, thus, actually, really, very = horribly over-used by me - fn (fairnymph)

First thing our research office does when they look at grants is to remove every occurrence of the word "also". - Matthew Todd

I'm amused (and faintly horrified) by the idea of constructing a sentence made entirely from the words above. - Michael Nielsen

Fair point - but I think Frank has an interesting point here generally. But perhaps that point is fundamentally the fragility of our ideas about what a 'paper' is. - Cameron Neylon

I think you have to consider that there are malicious actors in this space - to some extent corporations, think tanks and political parties already get whatever "scientific" results they have paid to get - if we go all radically-open, all the time, do you think an IPCC in 2100 would ever be able to put together a definitive report, over the tidal wave of billions of dollars of Knolspam and Knoldenial? - Richard Akerman

Which is why I argue that the role of libraries, and "a-list" publications is to represent the state of the art, provide some form of umbrella over what's out there. There is still a role for peer review, it's just different - Deepak Singh

In the space of four comments, you have just explained why we can't eliminate any one link in the chain of providers delivering scholarly information to the end user. Publishers and librarians help vet the material and act as something of a "firewall" against the drivel. Google's Knols underscores the changes that are pushing against those gateways and walls. I don't think a knol is equivalent to a scientific paper, but agree that the Knol may contribute to a change in perceptions of scholarly output. - Jill O'Neill

@Cameron. I think the traditional concept of a 4 page pdf that is the only thing that is of any value for scientific knowledge, does cloud the use of new technologies. However this concept is continually being challenged as can be demonstrated by JoVE inclusion in PubMed http://tinyurl.com/6yfs4w - why could a knol not be included. @Richard JoVE must have novel citation metrics. - Frank

@Deepak. I would agree here. knol has presented a new technology publishing platform and a revenue sharing business model, which is free (to author) which publishers charge alot of money to provide currently - can this really be justified?. @Jill A traditional journal typically passes the decision if an article is relevant or not to the peer-reviewer, Peer-review is what creates the firewall, not the journal. - Frank

Arxiv is an obvious example http://arxiv.org/ JoVE and SciVEE felt the need to create a science focused youTube, why could we not have a sceince focused knol? - Frank

Jill - I agree we can't eliminate a link in the chain Author-Publisher-Filter-User without things falling apart. But I don't see why we can't replace (or diversify) one or more of the traditional forms of each of these. I guess what I found interesting about Frank's post was that he was describing how little would need to change for a knol to provide a means for Google to substitute as the Publisher/Filter and that this might provide a mainstream route towards post publication peer review. - Cameron Neylon

I see no reason why it could not be used like we use Precedings, blogs or wikis to communicate primary scientific results and reference them. So far the entries are mainly of a review of established knowledge (encyclopedic style). I was pleased to see the entry by malaria was written by our collaborator Phil Rosenthal: http://knol.google.com/k... - Jean-Claude Bradley

Cameron, I agree. I see Google's move as a signpost to the publishing community that such initiatives may cause the scholarly community to re-frame their expectations of what scholarly output should look like and the functions such output should perform. When that shift occurs throughout the scientific, scholarly and research community, publishers will have to modify their services to accommodate the new forms of output. They need to begin planning for this now. - Jill O'Neill

I see huge potential in personal genomics, but I guess it won't happen as fast as I had hoped. - Mr. Gunn

The two biggest changes on the life science side, new analytical methods driven by cheap sequencing and (finally) microfluidic devices for multiplexed diagnostics - Deepak Singh

double 'like' !!! thanks !! ( Actually, I plan to major in psychohistory ) - Pierre Lindenbaum

never read Asimov :( - can anyone share how Asimov compares with the creativity and spirituality of Tolkien ? thanks! - General Kafka

Very very different. Can't really compare the two. I actually got into Asimov when I was very young (my dad's a big fan). This is classic scifi, not fantasy. Asimov is much closer to Arthur C. Clarke than to Tolkien. Philosophical, not spiritual and the source of one of my all time favorite quotes "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - Deepak Singh

I've only read Prelude to Foundation, it was awful - Christopher Harris

woooopps changed psychology to psychohistory in my previous comment... of course.... - Pierre Lindenbaum

Christopher .. that doesn't count. The original trilogy is it!!! The rest are pretty bad. I don't think Asimov even wrote all of them (he did write Prelude some 20 years after the original series) - Deepak Singh

oh dear, maybe i'll have to read them then.. they better be on audible - Christopher Harris

@Christopher Harris: agree. There are many books written by Asimov with a lower quality (Foundation and Earth , ...). But 'Foundation', 'Foundation & Empire' and 'Second Foundation' are worth reading. - Pierre Lindenbaum

does anyone know any GOOD sci-fi on neuroscience? it's always physics, space, chemistry or AI... - Christopher Harris

thanks for the tips on Asimov. Pierre: did you read it in english or french ? - General Kafka

French. Honestly, I read 'Foundation' when I was 14 and I still really love to re-read the trilogy but at the end, all Asimov's books seem to be the same: a big surprise at the end of each chapter ( Elijah Baley's investigations) and at the end, the bad/good guy was the less suspected (Tyrann, Second Foundation, Foundation and Empire,....) , - Pierre Lindenbaum

I could read either language - I guess I should just read the original -- anyone has comments on Asimov's english style ? maybe the ideas are more enjoyable than the quip/poetry/style etc ? - General Kafka

His style isn't poetic by any standards. Actually best way to get into Asimov is to read The Last Question, which was my introduction to Asimov as a 10 year old :) - Deepak Singh

I always liked the optimism of Asimov. IIRC, he was trained as a biochemist in that era (early 50s) when science was all about ingenuity and a better future. - Neil Saunders

i love Asimov as well. Read the foundation and the foundation and earth. also recommend his robot series!! - Hayk H.

And lets hope they don't make a Will Smith movie out of the Foundation. It was fun, but it was not as Asimov would have intended :) - Deepak Singh

Yeah, read the book and saw the movie... but did find only minor resemblance... the book was way better. Sorry, Will! - Egon Willighagen

Like Pierre, I read the original trilogy at age 14. I'd grown out of SF by the time I was 15 and had read every book in the category in the library ;-) I did, however, give "prelude" a go when it came out and agree it was rubbish. Probably Asimov did not write it. Marcus Chown could tell some stories about that. But better than Peter Jackson's LOTR (extended editions)? Come off it! Not possible. ;-) Nothing could be. - Maxine

Maxine ... it would be very very difficult. Let's start a pool on who should play the Mule - Deepak Singh

I wasn't gonna, but now I hafta: you people who think Jackson deserves anything but being fed to weasels for what he did to LoTR are on drugs! Ugh, those movies were a travesty, a disgrace, vandalism, an abomination! - Bill Hooker

@Deepak: for some reason I am already seeing in my head the Mule played by Kevin Spacey. - Bill Hooker

Bill, I have to heartily disagree with you :-) I think that the LoTR trilogy are among the best movies and was pleasantly surprised how well they reflected my imagination after reading the books. I still do prefer the books, though. - Lars Juhl Jensen

Deepak - no contest - Andy Serkis (aka Gollum and King Kong). Oh, and Einstein. - Maxine

to most non-techie people I know, wiki = wikipedia... - Andrew Su

I would say uncommon but becoming more widely used and fairly widely known in some specific settings. Fairly alien in experimental biology but well established and known as you move more towards computational biology? - Cameron Neylon

In my academic experience, wikis are well known but not always common. My department has a student wiki, my lab has a wiki (for posting tips, etc), and a bunch of classes I have taken have used wikis. But they all tend to get only sporadic participation. Research-wise, there are lots of wikis for annotating genes/structures like WikiGenes and TOPSAN but again, sporadic participation. - Shirley Wu

Perhaps more accurately, wikis are common but not commonly used (in the sense of both passive browsing and active participation, though more so for the latter) - Shirley Wu

In corporate environments, HEAVILY used, pretty much everywhere I have worked - Deepak Singh

Deepak, I'm a bit surprised and interested. Heavily and *successfully* used? In my neck of the corporate woods, several wiki-like initiatives, none of which really have gotten to critical mass... (Even within my computational group, 90% me, 10% other group members) - Andrew Su

Every place I've worked developers have used wikis for every project and that's been the place of record and where they capture all their discussions. At current place place to go for all kinds of stuff is Wikis including tips and tricks for your iphone on the corporate network etc etc. In all cases wikis existed before I got there. Outside of dev, most life science places no usage. - Deepak Singh

My experience is similar to Shirley's. In academia the _existence_ of wikis is not uncommon, but the participation is limited and sporadic. I've tried to promote a lab wiki on two occasions (two different labs, one for protocols/info and one for shared data), and twice I'd say I failed to get any decent participation ... not really sure if it was my ability to rouse contributors that was at fault, or something else. - Andrew Perry

Our group has a wiki and it's very difficult to encourage participation, so I don't think it's your people skills at fault :) It only keeps going because the boss is enthusiastic and relentless with a carrot/stick approach; e.g. contributions are a factor in handing out travel money. - Neil Saunders

We have a wiki and works great. Is not updated everyday, but people in the lab post announcements as they need (lab meeting changes, new emails, etc.). We are the only ones in the department with a wiki, though. - Pepe JG

I know a several major labs that use wikis for at least 6 years. Ours is used by the whole institute. The usual rules of participation (90/9/1) do apply but wikis are nothing special in this regard. - Roland Krause

I think we're on our third incarnation of various bits of wiki software, and we've finally hit on the right software for both our wet lab and bioinformaticians. Sometimes it's just finding the software everyone likes, and then it just works. But it was a long road to get people using it! It's Dan's favorite, DokuWiki - Allyson Lister

Ally, my favourite too. - Neil Saunders

We have a wiki in our lab, too, and although it had a hard time to get off the ground, it is now being used on an almost daily basis in both ways, as people use it to structure their ideas and experiments and to digest the literature. No other wikis in this department (psychiatry), as far as I know. - Daniel Mietchen

Another thing: Citizendium has an initiative by which students can get credit for writing articles on their wiki: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki... . Given that writing a well-structured "encyclopedic" entry on a subject is a great way to learn about it, this initiative may really have promise. - Daniel Mietchen

There's at least three run out of this corner of the building (in Biochemistry @ UCL) -- all using different platforms naturally (Doku seems nicest) -- but outside of the bioinformatics and IT people I don't know how well known they are... - Andrew Clegg

In my experience - no. I don't know anyone that uses a wiki; and like Andrew said, I think most people think "wiki" is short for wikipedia. - Paul Bacchus

So why do developers feel that collaboration is good and others don't? I learnt how to get into our corp firewall from my personal mac, cause there was an internal wiki on it and many such subjects, not just work related, so why not other folk? I can think of syntax being one. What about others? - Deepak Singh

Our student Web site is a wiki. It was absurdly easy to set up. Our cyberinfrastructure group here uses a wiki, too, and it works well for information pushing. - tim from Alert Thingy

My lab uses OWW wiki. Crucial organizational and communication platform in my opinion. - Maureen

Hey Neil. Tell our head of school that my lab book for the last year and a half has been a wiki ;-) - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

Agree with Deepak - at NPG we use wikis for all technical, editorial and publishing projects, sharing info (eg meeting reports), scheduling, everything you can think of. Heavily used tools - esp as we are distributed over so many offices. In my experience of talking to scientists, most do not use them or don't know what they are (apart from, as mentioned above, Wikipedia - some of them have heard of that;-), and the more tecchy ones such as those on FF ). - Maxine

Sure. Our lab wiki is at biowiki.org, and most consortia that I've worked in use wikis (e.g. ENCODE, modENCODE, 12-Drosophila comparative genomics). I don't know what baseline people are using in terms of contributions, but I would say it's considerably easier to get people to edit a wiki than a barebones HTML site. Of course, if wikipedia is your baseline, then all other wikis are abject failures. - Ian Holmes

Just a question Cameron, do you have tenure (or whatever-they-call-it-in-UK)? - Paulo Nuin

I'm happy to be argued with. I'm interested in where the argument breaks down. Two obvious arguments. I have a salary so I can play a long game with this. I don't need to put food on the table tomorrow, so I don't need an immediate monetary return. For people who do the choice has to be to protect the ability to make a return on each item. Second one: many of these are not purely digital objects, they have a real world connection, that does make copying damaging. - Cameron Neylon

Paulo - I have a permanent position yes. I appreciate that makes it mcuh much easier for me. - Cameron Neylon

You haven't answered my question. - Paulo Nuin

Well there's not really such a thing as tenure in the US sense in the UK. You go into an academic position and get past probation to get a permanent position. But probation doesn't take as long as a US tenure track and the few people fail to get confirmed as permanent. So I have done that. But I now have a permanent position at a government research lab, which is not really an academic position at all in the sense of a US university department but more like a job at e.g. ORNL or NIST - Cameron Neylon

So if you mean do I have reasonable job security then the answer is yes, and if you mean, have I been through the fire of a US-style tenure process then really the answer is no, some similarities but not the same sudden death experience that it seems to be in the US - Cameron Neylon

Thanks for you answer, a yes or no would suffice. But the fact that you have job security tells a lot of what you support, why you support it and the naivety of some of your ideas. People that have a protection bubble around them, tend to have the same discourse that you have. It's like listening (reading) to what a public servant says in comparison to a person that works in the private sector. - Paulo Nuin

I think this is the first time I've ever agreed with David Crotty. :-) - Bill Hooker

I think Cameron is making a good point. Sure, principled arguments often seem naive because we live in a grey world, not a black and white one, but if I understand correctly, he's just cautioning against advocating "extreme openness" and then being quick to apply a different standard when openness comes back to bite you. - Shirley Wu

Not to bring up the election again, but there are many examples of this - republicans demanding less government regulation, and then when the economy self-destructs (impacting them negatively) they blame the government for not regulating enough. Prop 8 too, maybe, in a different way - either we subscribe to "equal rights for all" under the constitution or we marginalize certain groups because some people claim it takes value away from marriage - Shirley Wu

I commented as well. I also agree with Crotty :). To cut a long story short, openness cannot exist in a vacuum. You always need some guidelines. The very existence of CC and people using CC licenses, for example, is a finger in the eye of existing big media, just as the GPL and the Apache license is a finger in the eye of close source software. There is the public data commons, and again, it's a matter of choice. If we want to change the system, we need to stay within some boundaries. - Deepak Singh

i almost always agree with david. Usually a question of degree rather than absolutes - Cameron Neylon from fftogo

So basically Cameron you still agree with the statement you wrote with no caffeine? Or you just bringing the discussion to a place that you guess you have control over? That's what it seems. - Paulo Nuin

Not entirely. Specifically I withdraw the use of the term hypocritical. What I still maintain is that it is not helpful <emp>for those people who beleive in and advocate encouraging re-use of digital material</emp> to use language of property rights when what they are complaining about is a lack of attribution. I also still maintain that <emp>if you believe and advocate encouraging the re-use of digital material</emp> then you can't then pick and choose as to what types of re-use you think are acceptable. - Cameron Neylon

Cameron, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I think in a culture where re-use was part and parcel of the process, you won't have these problems. It's why those of us who release under CC always re-use appropriately as well. It's a mindset - Deepak Singh

Actually - Shirley put it better than I did. - Cameron Neylon

Deepak, I think I am trying to say exactly the same thing as you are. I do my best to respect copyright, licences, and any other requests the authors make. I am absolutely not advocating a free for all - but social and technical systems that encourage respect and attribution, rather than rules based systems. - Cameron Neylon

Actually I think I've crossed the wires here - what I meant by 'what types of re-use above' was that you can't choose between 'nice' people and 'bad' people re-using your stuff. I won't argue that people shouldn't be allowed to use CC-BY-NC or copyrights. I will argue that I think they are counterproductive but they have every right to use them and expect them to be respected. - Cameron Neylon

I agree your comment immediately above is a concern for some people,, Cameron. Without taking a personal view either way, at Nature we have for a year or so "imposed" creative commons licences on our genomics publications, by negotiation with the various community representatives and conferences etc. It always takes a while for these things to filter through, and this is no exception.... more... - Maxine

I think that you (Cameron) are making a point similar to the one made by Michael Heller in The Gridlock Economy. Heller points out that it is easier to talk about (and point to examples of) the tragedy of the commons (e.g. abuse and overuse of the common resources) than about what he calls the "tragedy of the anticommons" (TAC). TAC can result when there are too many restrictive... more... - Hilary

Yes, when I was trying to come up with examples (both pro and anti my argument) many of them turn into tragedy of commons versus tragedy of the anticommons, and fundamentally that the application of property rights _does_ make some people richer, but that it reduces the overall value. For the argument to work, the pie needs to grow enough overall that most people do a bit better. And there will be (possibly many) cases where that doesn't work in practice. Really must read the Heller book. - Cameron Neylon

This isn't the kind of argument that you can entirely destroy by taking to its logical extreme. Of course things need some bounds around them, because as Shirley reminds us, we live in a grey world. Unfortunately, it's easier to think in black and white, especially where laws and regulations are involved. I agree that the problems resulting from underuse are harder to see than overuse, simply by nature, but I would also argue that the overuse problems tend to be more trivial. - Mr. Gunn

One other minor point - I think trademark appropriation is different than other types of IP infringement as it undermines the trust between the two parties (this was David Crotty's point). TMs are intended to identify the source of a good, and I think there is less of a case to be made here for encouraging open reuse of your trademarks. (Although resuse of Ricardo's image was technically copyright infringement) - Hilary

In other words, I have no sympathy for the people on Flickr that get pissed when someone uses one of their pictures on their site. Copy an original design and make it the logo for your company, now, that's being a douchebag, but if you're posting pictures to a photo sharing site, it's fair game to repost that picture, with attribution of course. - Mr. Gunn

Hilary ... great points, esp the Heller reference. I think if Ricardo's imagine had been used say as a graphic on a blog post, the discomfort would be much less visible. That it's being used to sell a commercial service, especially a dodgy one, speaks to this grey area that we talk about. - Deepak Singh

Deepak, that is right. I've had folks ask me to use the logo for various other things and I've rarely said no. Someone even used it on the cover of their phd thesis. I have no problem with that. It's the simple hijacking and no-questions-asked that I don't like much :-) - Ricardo Vidal

I agree with Hillary's distinction. David made a trademark/identity-focused comment to Camerons mostly copyright focused post. Cameron then made a very nice post about the trademark/identity perspective. So I am unsure what agreeing with David means. Does it mean that the identity perspective is the interesting view of this discussion? Or that it is not important to distinguish between the properties and features of how current law works? Or that community norms will not work, no matter the domain? Or? - Anders Norgaard

After some more thought: I find the post confusing in that it starts with what seems like a discussion of trademark infringement ("The name is just a pointer", "misrepresentation") and then shifts to a discussion about plagiarism and attribution. What he (Cameron) seems to be asking is that if one promotes liberal licensing of one type of IP, ought one to support the same principle for... more... - Hilary

I was definitely talking about copyright, just to be clear :) - Deepak Singh

And a related question: can the tragedy of the anticommons (if we want to call it that) occur for all types of IP? Heller makes a case for biotechnology patents, and I think there is a case to be made for copyright, but is there a case for trademarks? - Hilary

The point I think I was trying to make was that what is bad about this trademark infringement is that it is essentially either misattribution or lack of attribution. The infringer is both failing to acknowledge your work (the trademark) and also effectively attaching your name to work that is not yours. So that the bad thing here is the failure to attribute correctly because it breaks... more... - Cameron Neylon

Unfortunately I haven't read "The Gridlock Economy" - so I will try to watch this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch... and see I can have an opinion from that. - Anders Norgaard

My view would be that the same arguments should hold for copyright as for patents, but I'm interested in whether that breaks down. I am appreciating the strength of the argument that it may not hold for trademarks - but the question then becomes what is the best response to dealing with that? And is intention important? - Cameron Neylon

One unified perspective that I have of IP law is that copyright and patent law is made for regulating businesses. And the reason that so much of IP law gets negative attention is that the world has changed so much that normal behavior (copying, sharing, reusing) now falls under what some of these laws regulate. Therefore I also think that Camerons perspective on community norms is very interesting. - Anders Norgaard

Anders, would you feel that we can use norms within our community but we need law for regulating our interaction with business (or other communities with perhaps different norms)? - Cameron Neylon

Good question. I am not sure. I think that community norms are not strong enough to deal with companies. But I think they may be good for communities. I will keep an eye out for examples. - Anders Norgaard

My take on this, from very early days of my blog: http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/2002... - D0r0th34

Nice post, Dorothea. You've kept in the blogging game for a while! (I celebrated my 5th blogging b'day a few months back.) - Michael Nielsen

@Dorothea The sad problem with your great intention "No copyright notice, no Creative Commons license, no nothing. Plunder " is that it will in high likelihood not work. With the current state of law, exclusive (and in many countries practically unrescindable ) privileges are automatically granted. And witness the current "orphan works" debacle to see that without some kind of trusted, formalized Free licensing like Creative Commons only the few will dare "plunder" and build on your creativity. Sad sad sad. - Anders Norgaard

Lovely post Dorothea. I was thinking something rather similar - I have a rather beautiful early 17th century edition of Correlli's violin sonatas upstairs. Someone grabbed the italian edition, shunted it to England where it was ruthlessly copied onto new plates and sold to great acclaim. Which lead to Correlli getting more invitations to tour, commissions etc. And also lead via a route just as complex as Quixote to Bach's keyboard concertos - Cameron Neylon

Anders: It is still possible to grant material to the public domain. I have a CC0 license on my blog (now that CC0 exists!) that does just that. - D0r0th34

Cameron - Now that sounds like a nice short blog post! - Michael Nielsen

@Dorothea. Wonderful. I am glad you use it. And I think that using something trusted like CC0 gives a much better chance that people (and in particular companies) will dare honor your intention. - Anders Norgaard

Often a mistake :-) - Cameron Neylon

WRT to your post at http://friendfeed.com/e... I think it all gets a bit circular. A well ordered dataset means you can do new things with it, but how you order and view the dataset will influence the questions you ask as well. At core I guess I'm reaching towards a state where neither the data, nor the code, nor the platform /prevents/ us from asking the right questions in a clear way, and ideally /encourage/ well posed questions - Cameron Neylon

Science Commons are big on platform development but essentially have charity funding (more on this coming in a later part). Are we not our own organisation in essence. As Chad Orzel said 'We are science' so can we not be 'Science 2.0' a loose confederation of like minded and connected people - Cameron Neylon

Well, the issue I have is not so much with centralized versus decentralized, as long as we can be/are connected, as you say. But I am not sure about having journals/publishers "enable" the underlying foundation. Since their primary objective is not about promoting "Open Science" but about increasing readership/citations of their journals. - Wobbler

I am all for loose confederation and that's where having services and APIs come in. However, this cannot be done in a vacuum. You need the journals, CrossRef etc to provide APIs etc that we can build on. If they can figure out how to monetize them, then we will be in pretty good shape, IMO - Deepak Singh

It's also nice to have financial means to support individuals or projects supporting open science concepts (and to have workshops and meetings) but this seems difficult to generate without a formal organization in place... - Shirley Wu

Shirley - I agree and we're working on that from a number of angles - Jean-Claude Bradley

Wobbler, I can see what you're getting at. But why worry about why the applications are being built if they work well (and are sufficiently open, natch)? If open science gets done then everybody wins. Does it matter who enables it and why? Next big thing could be from a start-up, a grad student with some free time on her hands, two guys in a garage... that's the great thing about web development. Being in it at least partly for the money isn't a bad thing! - Euan

What Euan said - Deepak Singh

That is a good point. Maybe I am getting a bit too paranoid. I guess the key is indeed the applications being sufficiently open enough. Still, imagine the scholar working on the next big thing that does not specifically help a specific journal (publisher) get readership but promotes "open science" for everybody from all different research fields. Is there an organization that that person can go to for (financial) support (without "compromising" the "openness" of the concept)? - Wobbler

I also think that while publishers are doing a lot of work in this space (and I think that's a good thing - particularly if they want to survive) that a lot of the interesting things are being done in academic research projects, off the cuff side projects, and those loose confederations. They don't always get the exposure and a lot of it doesn't work out but that's where a lot of the innovation is IMO. - Cameron Neylon

As long as no one works in a vacuum. All of these efforts and fine (and there should be multiple different types), but they also have to talk the same language (http for starters :) ) - Deepak Singh

Well I think talking at all would be a good start - that's what this paper is hopefully about... - Cameron Neylon

I am just wondering if an independent academic organization to support a platform for academics for the sake of improving "science" rather than as a means to an end for journal publishers could encourage more scholars to participate. Example, the PLoS ONE rating model is an interesting initiative, but it is limited to helping PLoS (ONE) improve its feasibility. A better approach would be a system that covers all OA journal publications from all OA journals. That would stimulate OA/Open Science more than... - Wobbler

...just a system that is limited the PLoS ONE environment. On the issue of PLoS ONE's system, Björn Brembs suggests taking it a bit further and use reputation systems. Very potential idea to get things moving, but again, limited if it is only for the PLoS ONE environment/community. I think a global reputation system that is based on all the assessment work of scholars for all OA journals gets far more attention (and likely more support/recognition of those same academic communities). - Wobbler

And that would also stimulate fair "quality" competition between journals, and not have a single journal/publisher hog all the "Science 2.0" scholars because they were the earlier ones to start with the rating/comment thing. And fair quality competition (using volunteers, no less) would give a more accurate view of the distribution of (publication) quality among journals. - Wobbler

Some non-publisher organisations are starting to take an interest and funders in general are looking at providing a range of services. We can obviously set up our own platforms but the funding has to be thought through in the long term. Who is going to pay for e.g. a commenting platform? Or, given that ultimately the funders may for everything where will the cost be charged and how do we make sure it's good value for money? - Cameron Neylon

(cont my own rant for a sec). And whether it is "Science 2.0" or full OA that comes first, it is not going to matter: either of them significantly increases the value of digital scholarly communication. And when that time comes nothing screams (financial) continuity harder than having a big community of capable people doing valuable work for you, free of charge. And on that account, Nature is doing a hell of a job building that community. Others, including PLoS, are trying to do the same. - Wobbler

And the rest are in danger of fighting for "scraps" (e.g. for helpful and capable users and papers). I am not sure if that is truly desirable. Although admittedly, Nature's Connotea is a pretty sweet non competitive service (other than for marketing, but that is more me being nitpicky). Cameron: I think those are indeed important questions to ask. - Wobbler

Great essay. My first comment is concerning participation of scientists in commenting system: I wonder if the rule 90-9-1 applies here? When we look at the activity in the LS room it's clear that majority of members are rather passive. - Pawel Szczesny

Lots of good stuff here - what is it with shoes though? People in barcelona were also on about selling shoes...and books to be fair - Cameron Neylon

What's the shoe story from Barcelona, Cameron? - Michael Nielsen

Great essay... Might be food for discussion at BarCamb-2. - Jan Aerts

Pawel - It'd be interesting to have some data on that question, e.g., for PLoS ONE, and comparison to other sites, like Slashdot. - Michael Nielsen

http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff... - Bora Zivkovic

This is going to be required reading the first week in my science classes! - LPH™ and his dog P™

LPH - I'd be very interested to hear what your classes make of it! - Michael Nielsen

Absolutely - LPH™ and his dog P™

It seems like a special case of the general class of intellectual property problems? Short term, you can have some kind of rights management that facilitates the kind of trust networks mentioned in the essay. Shoe stores sell commodities... whereas a brilliant idea could be worth nothing, or billions. Long term, you would need to radically change the economics. People might give away a certain amount for free, but they want to be able to pay their rent too, and profit from their ideas. - Karim

If you can solve the problem for music, movies, books, and software, you can solve it for science ;-) - Karim

Karim - You're certainly right that it is a special case of the general class of intellectual property problems. Unfortunately, the analysis of IP problems that people like Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler have done for popular culture (e.g., music, movies, books etc) does not hold in the case of science, because of the very different economic model used to support scientists... - Michael Nielsen

No? I'm ignorant of how it does, but then again I haven't given it much thought either. :-) I know a grant isn't *strictly* equivalent to a book deal ;-) but there are some similarities... - Karim

It's the long term economics that are significantly different. And who owns and controls the rights. - Deepak Singh

@Michael the shoe story from Barcelona was 'The internet is better for selling shoes than doing science. What we need to realise is all the issues that made that possible. Perhaps seeing the fully web based science as 'impossible' is just the same situation as e.g. Amazon would have faced ten years ago' slightly paraphrasing John Wilbanks but the point was think back to no method of delivery, no secure online payments, no appropriate stock managements systems etc etc - Cameron Neylon

excellent essay - posted my comment there! Thanks! - Björn Brembs

This may be very useful in explaining the vision to those not operating directly in STM activities but providing support through services, tools, etc.. - Jill O'Neill

Jill - I hope so. If you do use it in this context, I'd be very interested to hear how it goes. - Michael Nielsen

Bjoern - Thanks for the thoughtful comment, will try to respond in the next 24 hours. - Michael Nielsen

Excellent article with lots of food for thought! - Jo Vermeulen

amen - Mark Dykeman

Great post Steve... some great points in there. Thanks. - Adrian Nadeau

Awesome. - Raoul Pop

Thanks a lot guys. I''m really interested in seeing who manages to clear this hump, and what that product will look like. - Steve Spalding

I hear ya Steve, we have been banging our heads off the wall with these issues for years now :) My head is starting to hurt! lol - Adrian Nadeau

"Writing about technology on the web is like building a Starbucks in Manhattan — it seems like a great idea until you look across the street." Nice. :) - Nathaniel Payne

Fabulous post, Steve. It's a message we've brought up ad nauseum on The Guidewire but the irony is, of course, that the mainstream isn't reading either one of our blogs. In an interview on 60 Minutes this weekend, Bruce Springsteen said something I can't get out of my head. "You have to make an audience care about your obsessions." I personally haven't figured out how to do that yet, but am somewhat comforted that none of us in the technosphere have. - Carla Thompson

I think a large part of it is making our obsessions more palatable. We are all saturated in information day in and day out, so we develop solutions to the problems that arise from that, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." The result is that the best ideas I ever hear using social tech come from people who have just been introduced to it. - Steve Spalding

@Nate who knows, so many of them are shutting down it might not be such a bad plan afterall. ;) - Steve Spalding

Seth needs to reread his book Meatball Sunday! Is he pushing a pyramid skim? "Buy my book to join my tribe!" John Chow! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Wrong thread, Igor. ;) - Nathaniel Payne

Sorry! ;-) - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Word. - Eric Rice

Great post. Mainstream is much bigger. Popular articles on FriendFeed can't usually get anywhere on Digg. - Mitchell Tsai

Even Digg is only a larger subset of "not mainstream." It has a lot of traffic, but I think sites like Drudge Report, DailyKos and Perez Hilton have orders of magnitude more -awareness-. We are very good at rallying numbers, but very bad at getting people to care. - Steve Spalding

Leverage: Do you need to reach everyone though? What about concentrating on movers & shakers (or whichever group interests you)? - Mitchell Tsai

You definitely don't need to reach everyone. The problem we suffer from is that movers and shakers are generally unwilling to -buy- the services that are being offered to them. I am less concerned with saturating mainstream markets than I am in creating services that meet the -needs- of mainstream markets (an enterprise software company is way more likely to be profitable than even the most popular social app) - Steve Spalding

Well done.. - Dave Peck

I don't view the "law of large numbers" as a "dirty little secret". I agree with you across the board though which is why I've never wasted any time chasing Digg or Stumble traffic. We just got a stable link from Drudge to TVbytheNumbers -- no branding, just "TV Ratings" (which makes a lot of sense for a few reasons). We didn't ask (never have communicated w/Drudge). It's not as much... more... - Robert Seidman

Great post. congrats - jonathan

Steve: How about concentrating just on "influencers" (not big movers & shakers, but people who are heavy networkers)? There was a marketing book (forget name) which said that "Old money" tends to hide info - my favorite hairdresser, vacation spot, etc..., but some types of "New money" are the guys who share their favorite tips around the golf club - cool car I got, great vacation spot, neat electronic toy, good business connection spot. - Mitchell Tsai

Targeted marketing. My favorite recent books are "Buzzmarketing" - Mark Hughes, 2008 http://amazon.com/Buzzmar... "Meatball Sundae" - Seth Godin, 2007 http://amazon.com/Meatbal... I think the quote comes from one of these, but not sure. - Mitchell Tsai

brilliant - yvons

Excellent post Steve, for a minute there I thought it had to do with fraud. - Mike Fruchter

Great points. In the past few years of writing my blog, I figured out that nobody cares about what I think is cool. But when I solve problems that plague others, ones which I personally might brush off or consider trivial, such as how to recover a lost password or use a spreadsheet to budget your money, the traffic pours in. - Tom Harrison

Mitchell, that's another good point. Especially when growing a product, but many times you are going to have to move past initial influencers to scale your income. - Steve Spalding

Steve: I think the cool web 2.0 idea is to have the *influencers* be part of your marketing team. It's a more-refined and friendly version of MLM. I'd rather have 100 other people do my selling, than try to sell everyone myself. - Mitchell Tsai

Good post Steve. I wrote something about this phenomenon this morning. The problem is both a lack of creativity on the entrepreneur side (lets use the free model everyone else uses in web 2.0) and on the demand side. The mainstream user doesn't need services the early adopter crowd over here gets all crazy about (including Friendfeed). It doesn't solve a problem, address a need, so people won't pay for it. It's dead simple really. Create something that produces user value, and the user will be happy to pay - Alexander van Elsas

fantastic article. So many good points and analogies. - Chieze Okoye

@Alexander Right on, and there are a bunch of problems out there just like that. While there were a lot of problems with the pre-bubble days, the one thing they did well was recognize how the web could help with real, brick and mortar problems. - Steve Spalding

http://www.patientslikeme.com/ is a good example of a company doing something useful, I think. - Meryn Stol

Very cool Meryn, thanks for passing this along. This is exactly the sort of application that made the web so interesting for me. - Steve Spalding

I loved this article. I was discussing Knol and data portability with a friend of mine last week and he informed me that he barely even uses facebook. This is both a challenge an an opportunity. The future lies with applications that are both ubiquitous and dead simple while adding real value to the lives of it's users. Facebook came close but the abundance of applications was both a... more... - Derick Valadao

Interesting concept, comparing effort to usage. How easy is it for someone to just "pick up" something like Friendfeed. I'd dare say it's harder than we might think. - Steve Spalding

Serendipitous discovery is why online rules, so I am not sure what the hell the person is talking about - Deepak Singh

The author argues exactly that -- serendipitous discovery is on the decline because of targeted searches and following hyperlinks, instead of browsing table of contents. Although one might argue that serendiiptious discovery in a world bursting with information sources probably isn't the most efficient way to procure new knowledge. ;) - Todd Harris from twhirl

Librarians sometimes note the decline of "serendipitous discovery", but I wonder if they're actually mourning the partial passing of paper-and-shelf serendipity. Eva's use of PubMed's Abstract Plus feature seems somewhat serendipitous to me, but there is something to be said for browsing the table of contents. Journals often have a distinct character and attract or select publications which belong together under one cover. I think good research requires both browsing and targeted searching. - Jere

Just read the abstract. Makes no sense to me at all. Also, somewhat ironic that an article on restricted information is itself unreadable without subscription. - Neil Saunders

If anyone blogs about it, just drop a link here - Bora Zivkovic

Jere, yes, but it's far easier to browse online than in print. The barrier is just too high with print. I know my diversity of knowledge increased exponentially after I went mostly online. And why should a journal decide what goes together. I trust myself to do a good job of that and mix and match as required. - Deepak Singh

here is my comment: http://blog-msb.embo.org/blog... - Thomas Lemberger

My thoughts on the article (and links to three other blog posts about it) are here: http://network.nature.com/blogs... - Martin Fenner

I've only browsed the article and I don't know enough statistics to criticise this but there are two things that appear to me to be missing. One is the possibility that (not necessarily related to journals moving online) science is just moving faster and bigger so citation to older material is less relevant. If I think of my PhD thesis 8 years ago I was routinely citing stuff 15-20 years old. I don't do that in current papers because less of it is relevant. - Cameron Neylon

My other thought was that the other explanation is that we already have improved filtering mechanisms so people are finding the better papers more efficiently. There seems to be an assumption in the paper that more concentration must be dysfunctional - without an analysis of whether it might be an indicator of functional improvement in appraoch - Cameron Neylon

Perhaps with greater accessibility, people have quit citing old papers just because everyone always cites those without even reading them. Those who have the least access, tend to cite very old stuff, textbooks, popsci articles, e.g., http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

My take here: http://www.sennoma.net/main... - Bill Hooker

http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

This could merely be a criticism of contemporary electronic search methods, which in the future would no doubt become a] more evolved (see 'google sets' experiment in google labs) and b] present higher visibility over the fence of the particular maze you're in right now. It's certainly true that electronic search in the contemporary context has a funnelling effect, while appearing to present diversity. Look how many people turn up at the same places at the same time whenever something interesting is said! - Ian Tindale

I've read the paper, but can't make sense of the figures. Can anyone translate? - _alf

like the sound of that. - Colin Ashe

Cool - some interested folks - will think some more! - Matt Wood

Just throwing in another 'me too'. I'd attend. - Euan

Ace - have in mind a small 10-20 person workshop covering techniques, approaches and case studies for modern development of scientific software. - Matt Wood

It's a great idea. Would definitely attend - if in Australia :) If it happens, maybe you can share the experience so we can copy and do it here too. - Neil Saunders

Sounds like a great idea! - Michael Nielsen

Me too. On a weekend would be best so I don't have to take time off. - Michael Barton

Great. Chad Fowler organises 'charity workshops' around some of his Ruby conferences. Grassroots prices to cover costs, with the rest going to charity. I like that idea. - Matt Wood

Given your area of influence I guess there will be more than 20 people willing to come :) Count me in if it's in Europe. - Pawel Szczesny

@Pawel - cool, maybe we can do two! - Matt Wood

Might even be possible to synch multiple workshops -- Second Life, skype...? - Bill Hooker

I created an account and copied one of the experiments from our wiki. It looks like it keeps track of versions ok and should be usable as a lab notebook. The one issue I have is that there is no mechanism to access the notebook pages without a login. This means that the notebook will not be indexed by search engines and will not be discovered by researchers who don't already know about... more... - Jean-Claude Bradley

Copied from comment on Blog - Interesting idea, although as you might expect, along with Jean-Claude I'm not convinced that closing things up is the most effective way to be open. Conceptually though explicitly recording who has seen what is still an interesting route to explore though and if this is a route into full ONS that people feel more comfortable with then that can't be a bad... more... - Cameron Neylon

Don't seem to be able to get onto the system anyway - doesn't like my passwords or something - Cameron Neylon

Coming from OWW, I'm sort of biased but the closed fashion that this "open notebook" is using is not going to work. Not sure that tracking can prevent the risk of being scooped either. I happened to sign in without any delay. At OWW, all registrations are parsed manually and we try (we do try!) to verify that every user is authentic. Do you think a page displaying the list of users/IP's that visited a page would prevent getting scooped? - Ricardo Vidal

Glad to have generated some interest. Let me say that the problem with public access was a bug, not a feature, as was the ability to register without an invitation (I ticked the wrong box in the settings). All should be fixed now. I'm not sure that the tracking will prevent scooping, but I hope it will discourage it. This is simply an experiment to see if it does. As the beta progresses I want to add the option of time based emabargos aswell. The idea is to let people share information however they prefer. - Joe Fitzsimons

Ricardo's right in that a determined scooper (may their entrails knot!) will simply claim to have had the stolen idea independently. Proving otherwise is going to be a nightmare than no one will want to take on -- although user tracking might help to establish a pattern of behaviour. I think Cam has hit the main point, that this sort of Shared system might be something more people would be comfortable with -- for example, creating a group for a few labs that are collaborating. - Bill Hooker

What might be really useful is a bridge: some kind of description/running summary of the Shared Notebook that is fully indexed and Open, so that potential collaborators can still find you, get in touch, log in and become part of the project. - Bill Hooker

Bill, so we'd have an open/accessible project "abstract" and everything else closed? - Ricardo Vidal

My hope is that by making the user tracking sufficiently obvious and accessible that it will discourage scooping. Of course no-one is going to try to prove someone stole their ideas, but if this information is available for the world to see, then I expect that people will be sufficiently concerned with their reputation not to want to be seen to steal ideas. It's a disincentive, not a barrier. - Joe Fitzsimons

I left blogs enabled to act as exactly the kind of bridge you are suggesting. Additionally, wiki structure can be seen, but not content. You can also create shared group wikis for collaborating. - Joe Fitzsimons

If anyone has an ideas on how this can be made better, I'd be delighted to hear them, and if anybody wants to get involved in the development I welcome that too. - Joe Fitzsimons

Joe, have you had the chance to look at OpenWetWare? (There's a link on the main page to the lab notebook part) - Ricardo Vidal

Ricardo - yes I was wondering if OpenWetWare has the same features - I think you can control access pretty well if you wish on OWW. So the added feature here is that it would be by invitation only then. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Ricardo- No, but I'll have a look. Jean-Claude- Actually the user tracking (which I plan on expanding substantially) was my main reason for setting it up. - Joe Fitzsimons

Joe - you would have to check with OWW to see how closely they track pageviews - Jean-Claude Bradley

The point isn't for me to track the page views, but rather for it to be done is a public and open way. You don't even need an account to view what's been happening. I realise that my current directed graph lacks detail, and I'm working on fixing that. As I say, this was just an experiment, and if people like it, great, if not, no big deal. - Joe Fitzsimons

How do you ensure "real names" (a la Amazon.com)? What's to prevent people from using fake profiles (a la BugMeNot.com)? How do you prevent information from leaving the system (e.g. someone could "steal" an idea from a paper someone wrote who has access to Social Notebook)? On the other hand I can see some use in having a credible way to establish that idea x had been mentioned by person y on date z. Don't know how suitable existing preprint servers such as Nature Preceedings are for this? - Eric Jain

Real names should work because it is invitation only. I'm happy to invite anyone who gives me a legitimate institutional address, since that is a reasonable gaurantee of their identity. Alternatively, any use can invite friends. Presumably they know these people. I'm not entirely sure I follow you about information leaving the system though. The idea is to discourage users from stealing other users ideas. This can't prevent a subsequent person from stealing ideas outside of the system. Have I misunderstood? - Joe Fitzsimons

Eric, I guess real names are verified as humanly possible. If someone happens to make it through, it's because they were sneaky and not bots. Also, we ask not only for a real name and email. we also ask for a reason, affiliation, etc. - Ricardo Vidal

Its very hard to work against the active and deliberate cheater, at least in the short term. This is mostly about discouraging I think. I think the central criticism of this approach remains that it isn't properly Googleable. As Jean-Claude and others have said, this is crucial for people to find you. John Wilbanks is also good on the problem of 'closed gardens'. The network effects we... more... - Cameron Neylon

We'll be having another one of our Town Hall meetings at OWW tomorrow and the topic will be none other than Lab Notebooks. I'd like to invite anyone interested in the topic to join in. More info here: http://bit.ly/2esgCF - Ricardo Vidal

Cameron - I think Joe has fixed the issue of Google indexability, at least for the totally public setting. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Joe - there is definitely a need for more people to get involved in Open Science. People are not trying to tell you to stop - they're just giving info about what is going on. We always learn something from any attempts to get something done. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Yes, as Jean-Claude says, it was a bug, not a feature. It's now fixed. I think it would be a bad idea to make stuff that was marked other than 'Public' as searchable via google. There is a built in keyword system, etc. It would be nice to have a search that brings up just the page title if the user is logged out. Not sure how easily I can impliment this though. - Joe Fitzsimons

I was trying to make a slightly different point. A lot of the pull in ONS comes from adventitious discovery. While the halfway house of being visible to known people may be something that people are more comfortable with they then won't get the big benefits (because only a very small proportion of people will be known). Now if there is a way to make people feel safe enough to come in _and_ give them the benefits then its a winner. Access via openid with anyone who asserts an appropriate email address? - Cameron Neylon

Or as an aside as I commented elsewhere tonight. Perhaps if the microcredit problem is solved along with attribution for blog posts, comments, etc perhaps people will want to assert a 'real' identity before looking at things so their contribution is registered - Cameron Neylon

Ah. Open ID is certainly doable. Maybe the email address is enough, but really I want people to be easily identifiable, otherwise the user tracking is essentially worthless. Certainly real name + email address for verification are enough. I am just not sure how best this can be checked. Certainly .edu and .ac.uk email addresses could be automatically accepted. Not sure what to do about the rest. - Joe Fitzsimons

Actually I would drop the invitation system in a flash if there was a simple way to verify real names. Any ideas? - Joe Fitzsimons

Amazon uses credit cards to verify names. Probably not an option here :-) - Eric Jain

The Amazon suggestion is interesting - maybe you could authenticate by charging a very nominal amount (say, 10c) using the Amazon Flexible Payment system. I've never used the system, so don't know it would work for this purpose or not. - Michael Nielsen

A bit of context: my understanding is that Amazon Flexible Payments allows other people to use the existing Amazon system to do payments, paying Amazon a small royalty. - Michael Nielsen

Best is the enemy of the good... Having a site that allows people who would otherwise share nothing share something might be a good thing. But I don't get the logic behind tracking people to discourage plagiarism: If I was worried about people stealing my ideas, would I really want to show them to people whom I don't trust to give proper credit unless they're being tracked? - Eric Jain

Eric - Well, it's the idea of making your ideas public, rather than showing them to specific people. I really don't think people would risk their scientific reputation if there is a non-negligible chance of being caught. Of course you can't stop someone who doesn't care about getting caught plagarising, but I don't think these people represent the real danger. You could blatantly rip preprints off the arXiv and submit them to journals if you really don't care about being caught. - Joe Fitzsimons

Posting a preprint to a server such as arXive feels safe (perhaps even safer than keeping something to oneself) because doing so establishes a date and authorship. Sort of like a "patent pending". Having something similar at a more detailed level (ideas?) could be useful to encourage people (i.e. make it in their own interest...) to share. But this doesn't require tracking access, which seems problematic to me (and not all that robust anyway)? - Eric Jain

Actually, the UK arXiv server does have limited user tracking. - Joe Fitzsimons

http://arxiv.org/help... argues against showing what paper was accessed how many times and by whom, so I'd be surprised if one of the mirrors did so nevertheless? I suppose they do collect some information for internal use (e.g. to detect abuse). There is also the trackback feature (detect and show incoming links), but that's something altogether different... - Eric Jain

Have you never seen CiteBase? Here is an example: http://www.citebase.org/abstrac... just click 'Downloads'. lt lists downloads by organization, country or date. - Joe Fitzsimons

"The first place winner will be awarded a cash prize of $35,000 and the second place winner a cash prize of $15,000" .. not bad - Pedro Beltrao

This is something our "BioGang" could participate in ;) - Pawel Szczesny

Pawel ... start the page :) - Deepak Singh

The BioGang *will* win ... :-) but who will get the prize ? Amnesty ? - Pierre Lindenbaum

"BioGang" :) our category is 2. interpret, visualize or connect the knowledge more effectively, and/or - Attila Csordas

I agree with you Attila. One idea that I have is to make easier to extract DOIs from PDF files. But that's only a seed. - Paulo Nuin

Might I suggest a fund to support the attendance of less established scientists at (potentially non-traditional) conferences? - Cameron Neylon

Point 1 might be interesting too. Thinking about how to create a semantic abstract. - Pierre Lindenbaum

The DOIs from PDFs thing is already being tackled by Elsevier, but the step immediately after (what to do with that info) is interesting too. Like Papers on the mac. - Euan

Euan, good to know about the DOIs. The Papers connection comes to mind, and we can take advantage of the fact that Papers is Mac only. - Paulo Nuin

I will sustain the stream of ideas. One of the things (that possibly is done already) I would really love to have is the structured/semantified "related articles", i.e. possibility of filter (and enrich) list of related publications by sequence similarity (show me abstracts on similar proteins), taxonomic info (on other organisms in the group), citation (citing and cited) etc. - Pawel Szczesny

I will try to summarize the discussion on the Biogang wiki. - Pawel Szczesny

It would be good to have a new Google Reader like mobile PubMed Reader - Attila Csordas

OK, first summary is here: http://biogang.wikispaces.com/EGC+sum... feel free to change it. I will update it after next batch of ideas appears here. - Pawel Szczesny

Good summary, Pawel, looking forward to more related ideas. - Attila Csordas

Pawel, thanks a ton - Deepak Singh

added my contribution in the wiki; Time to sleep - Pierre Lindenbaum

just found on public-semweb-lifesci mailing list: "Open Health Tools is working on a challenge grant for Health Sciences as well. http://www.openhealthtools.org/ " - Pierre Lindenbaum

I think category 1 could use some of you Big Brains as well. In re: "editing and reviewing", there are approximately as many workflows as there are peer reviewers, and every one of them uses a different combination of tools. A nice online environment/suite for building and following review/edit workflows could make a huge difference to science if widely adopted. - Bill Hooker

I've added an idea about "Feedflare style links for PubMed feeds" to the wiki ( http://biogang.wikispaces.com/EGC summary ). Maybe it's not a perfect EGC idea, but some of the PubMed feed related ideas got me thinking. - Andrew Perry

I have submitted Sciphu.com, - a blog (maybe a future wiki), for this challenge, but if there is anything regarding the sciphu blog-review concept you guys can use you are most certainly welcome to use whatever, and also if you have any use for a wet-lab molecular biologist (computers in any shape or form are all black boxes to me, so help would probably consist of vague ideas and moral support only), I am happy to chip in. - Nils Reinton

anyone who is working on this and preparing a submission? if you have any questions please let me know. - Rafael Sidi

@Raphael is this contest distinct from the Elsevier Article 2.0 Contest ? (for me, at this time, I've got too much work to think about the Elsevier Challenge ) - Pierre Lindenbaum

Maybe we should rename this room to The Information/Informatician Life Scientists. :) - Attila Csordas

How do we convince more people doing primarily wet lab work to adopt these things ? I would really like to have more cell signaling people around here. - Pedro Beltrao

Cool. I thought Science had been doing this for a while, though. - Matt Wood

But they didn't blog about it. How am I supposed to find out :). - Deepak Singh

Nice daydreaming Pedro. I'd really like to have more mitochondrial and stem cell biologists around here. My first trial to convince these guys was the Laboratory Website Competition: http://pimm.wordpress.com/laborat... - Attila Csordas