Science Wide Open
Jean-Claude Bradley makes a good point about open data:I think that the part that we have yet to embrace is the posting of work fresh out of the test tube. As long as scientific research is published in an article format and its value is determined by a popularity contest of citations and peer-reviewed blessing, there will be little motivation to post work fresh out of the test tube. Especially when issues like competition and tenure are at stake.
And he then goes on to note:
My opinion at this point is that publishers or any kind of central repositories are not going to be as effective in communicating this kind of raw scientific data, unless it is readily available on the uberdatabases like Google or MSN. That's why Blogger makes an optimal vehicle to communicate raw experimental data: no cost, no gatekeeper and anyone looking on an uberdatabase will find your stuff.
Yes: Blogger as the ultimate open data conduit. Nice. (Via Open Access News).
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5 comments:
I applaud the blogging of data, as opposed to "only" papers about the data, when the data turn out right, the reviewers like what they read, etc.
However, I'm not sure about "Blogger as the ultimate open data conduit." Surely that would be software that is itself open? WordPress, for example?
And, whatever the software used, would structured blogging help to make the data easier to find and manipulate?
OK, sloppy writing: I meant Blogger as a representative of a class of software - I know you hate Blogger (I don't exactly love it).
What do you mean by "structured blogging"? It's not quite clear to me.
The problem with WordPress is that not everyone can or is willing to go to the trouble of hosting it. I view Blogger as the ultimate open data conduit because anyone in the world with access to the internet can start an information feed at zero cost and with a very short learning curve. And anyone with an internet connection can find that information easily, completing the communication.
Concerning structured blogging, I think that there is a role for that for making things easier to communicate. For example, I want to ensure that each experiment post has an Objective, a Procedure, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Log. But those are rules for my lab, my students, at this time. I don't want software deciding that at this point. Now, for machine readability, we are in the process of converting some of our feeds to XML (specifically Chemical Markup Language CML. That should be interesting as more people start doing that.
Thanks for your comments.
I noticed some connections also with Synaptic Leap. I am not sure how this connection was established but I really appreciate these efforts of trying to make scientific communication more transparent and more community driven.
Maybe it would be interesting to have a structured request of resources. If I think about a project that requires some resource/skill I do not have I could request in a structured away to be picked up by aggregators.
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