ScienceOnline2010 - FriendFeed

John Dupuis to John's feed, Science 2.0, ScienceOnline2010

I'm on the search committee for a new dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering here at York and we're at the stage where we're coming up with interview questions. I'd like to throw a couple of open access/open source/open science/open data/scholarly communications questions into the mix. I'd really appreciate input from all of you out there:

24 hours ago - Comment - Like - Share

Jim Till, Paul Bacchus, Neil Saunders and 10 other people liked this

If you could ask a potential dean any scholarly communications question, what would it be? - John Dupuis

19 more comments

What concrete steps would you want your organization to take toward OA? - D0r0th34

Don't assume they're in love with OA -- try to get a question in early that can gauge their true feelings about OA issues but doesn't lead them on. - John Fink

You're right, John. I should probably assume that they'll have no idea we're talking about when we way open access. Also, any ideas about metrics/IF questions? - John Dupuis

"How soon will you implement a Harvard-style OA mandate?" Cautious answers along the lines of "I'd want to see how faculty felt" are fine, but if you get a "Huh? Whassat?" or "Not as long as there is breath in my profit-driven lungs" then you have all the answer you need. - Bill Hooker

Thanks, Bill. I'm also interested to see the reaction to what we come up with from the other members of the search committee, most of whom are science & engineering faculty members. And the provost... - John Dupuis

yes, I was assuming that one of the conceivable answers to my question was "None." *g* - D0r0th34

Try to frame the question while also providing information -- "There are many misunderstandings about Open Access publishing such as /OA archiving will kill journal subscriptions/, /OA is essentially a vanity press service/ or /OA is about punishing greedy or obstructive publishers/. What do you feel is the best way to counter these false assumptions?" [Note: taken from http://www.arl.org/sparc...] - joe is...

In your opinion, would open science A) Allow the department to make more effective use of research funds? B)Get higher scores on the "broader impacts" portion of grant applications? http://friendfeed.com/science... C) Mitigate the risk of any possible future data provenance research scandals? - Mr. Gunn

How will you encourage and promote collaboration between researchers at York and between York researchers and scientists at other institutions? - Walter Jessen

I'd just ask for the candidate's opinion of the impact factor, and whether they know of any alternatives. (Imagine what would happen if you asked, say, Bjoern that question!) Open science stuff is harder to get at -- have they heard of the polymath project? What do they know about preprint servers (arXiv and Nat Pre)? If they don't know about UsefulChem, show it to them and ask for a reaction. - Bill Hooker

Thanks everyone. Lots to think about and massage into questions. Keep 'em coming! Bill, I think we're all looking forward to the day Bjoern becomes a dean somewhere. - John Dupuis

"What do you see as the options for making our research communication more effective? What do you think are the important areas where we need to improve?" - Cameron Neylon

"If you had a budget of X to improve research infrastructure at the faculty, what would you use it for?" Follow-up questions as above - what does this to achieve A, B, or C? - Daniel Mietchen

"What are the most exciting events you've been to in the past two years, and why were they exciting?" (Things I'd look for as very positive signs, and which might serve as the basis for followup questions: events where the median age was in the twenties; events where the people driving them are in their twenties; events where most of the people were there for the love of it, not because... more... - Michael Nielsen

Stewart Brand has a great phrase for the kind of idea I was trying to convey in my last comment: "Look to the edges to see where the centre is going". He's been more successful at doing that than almost any Dean I know of, in some cases decades ahead of the curve. - Michael Nielsen

"What's the most exciting field or recent discovery you know of that almost nobody's ever heard of?" If they tell you about a field where there's already a half-dozen papers in Nature, I think that's a problem. - Michael Nielsen

(Sorry, getting a little carried away, I've sort of strayed off the open science theme.) - Michael Nielsen

"Many big science experiments are moving toward (or have already adopted) open data policies, sharing their results with the entire scientific community. When do you think data from an experiment should be made publicly available? When should it be kept secret." - Michael Nielsen

Maybe start with more general/open questions first before moving into the more leading questions. Depending on their answers, you might already get enough information. Things like "How do you envision the future of scholarly communication? What are the key elements of your vision? What kind of strategies and activities do you see yourself proposing/ endorsing to make sure York doesn't fall behind on qualitative scholarly communication and collaboration?" Maybe things like that? - Wobbler

How about: "Do you believe that the current system for quality-filtration of new knowledge is sustainable in its present form?" Possible answers, such as "yes", or "no", or "I don't understand your question", should indicate which followup questions would be appropriate ones. - Jim Till

Kubke to Kubke's feed, ScienceOnline2010

Anyone interested in exploring cloudworks as an aggregating site for Scionline2010? http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudsc...

13 hours ago - Comment - Like - Share

Konrad Förstner, Pierre Lindenbaum, Pawel Szczesny and 2 other people liked this

I was introduced to it today. It allows interaction/liveblogging/commenting in a way similar to FF, but an advantage I see is that it can also aggregate tweets based on the hashtag, and these can get archived through a function called twapper that gets set up when one sets up the cloudspace. It is not open source at this time, but I am told that will be happening in the near future. I am not sure I can assess its functionality/advantages/disadvantages on my own :). I also don't see in it the ability for it to take in my feeds from other social network sites, but that might result in keeping the space of discussion cleaner. The space is by definition open, there is no option to create closed discussions within the site. My understanding is that it was created originally with funding from the UK goverment as an open collaborative educational tool. Any thoughts? - Kubke

4 more comments

Looks interesting! Need to check it out... - Björn Brembs

You might want to check out the ascilite 2009 (or ascilite09) tags. The meeting is being blogged through there. Might provide a good template of how the dynamic works. - Kubke

Not quite sure what 'cloudstream' and 'cloudscape' entail, but this service really looks very promising. Good stuff! - Björn Brembs

The cloudscape is like a group of clouds (could be like a wave, or like a group, eg, the meeting). The cloudstream is more like an individual thread within that cloudscape (the sessions), but can belong to more than one cloudscape. What I am not sure is how collaboratively each cloudstream can be generated. I like that you can add references, comments, and links in its own space (would... more... - Kubke

I am sorry, my error. The cloud is the individual element (where the session liveblogging would be done). The cloudstream is the stream of clouds (it tells you what is happening within the cloudscapes you are following) - Kubke

Kubke to Kubke's feed, ScienceOnline2010

Fwd: Resources found at ASCILITE09 (via http://friendfeed.com/kubke...)

11 hours ago from iPhone - Comment - Like - Share

Bora Zivkovic

Fwd: ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants - http://scienceblogs.com/clock... (via http://friendfeed.com/coturni...)

yesterday - Comment - Like - Share

Bora Zivkovic

Fwd: FriendFeed not dead yet, so it appears, so we can discuss #scio10 in the room there: http://friendfeed.com/science... (via http://friendfeed.com/coturni...)

Sunday - Comment - Like - Share

Kubke, Jean-Claude Bradley, Michael Nielsen and 2 other people liked this

Bora Zivkovic

Fwd: Great lineup for @The_Monti at #scio10 Jan 14th. SciFi novelist John Kessel, author Scott @huler and ant researcher Rob Dunn. More to follow (via http://friendfeed.com/coturni...)

Sunday - Comment - Like - Share

Bora Zivkovic

Fwd: Love how the list of #scio10 sponsors is growing: http://www.scienceonline2010.com/ http://www.scienceonline2010.com/index... (via http://friendfeed.com/coturni...)

Sunday - Comment - Like - Share

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights 5 http://scienceblogs.com/clock... #scio10