discussion of open science - SciFoo Lives On - 20070904

I did an informal presentation as part of this week's SciFoo Lives On in Second Life, about definitions of open science.  Here's a snapshot followed by a transcript of what I said (my avatar is Rakerman Yellowjacket)

[9:17]  Horace Moody: Richard, would you like to say a few words before Bill?
[9:17]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: sure
[9:17]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: let me run some ideas up the virtual flagpole, as it were
[9:17]  Vidal Loon: I personally think that these tools and much more can be weaved together to make a real "office" type of setup for the scientist to keep tabs on the info and have it available for other.
[9:17]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: my perspective comes from software engineering and enterprise architecture
[9:17]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: both of which have big aspects of technology planning based on requirements gathering
[9:18]  Vidal Loon: there are just so many tools available to juggle data nowadays. it's a question of knitting them all together.
[9:18]  CW Underwood: VL: as long as each module stands alone and doesn't lock anyone into anything, that's a great idea (don't like the idea of Office as model though...)
[9:18]  WhiteWizard Chemistry: Agrees with Rakerman
[9:18]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: so when I saw the discussions at SciFoo I thought it would be useful to apply that kind of thinking, to systematise the discussion
[9:19]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: I found a lot of things were getting mixed together - desire for speedy publication, desire for recognition for grants/tenure/post-doc, and issues with the current scholarly communication system
[9:19]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: so i think the key is to focus on what problem you're trying to solve
[9:19]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: To me, when I hear the core of the discussions about open science
[9:19]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: it's about making better *science* through collaboration and open sharing
[9:20]  CW Underwood: better science, yep
[9:20]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: that is quite different from some of the goals of open access, which address availability of science later on
[9:20]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: so I would suggest focusing around the aspect of making better science happen through open communication
[9:21]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: then that leads to a clearer discussion of the kinds of tools that would support that
[9:21]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: we have already seen a good discussion about using wikis
[9:21]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: from a library perspective, I think one of the most useful aspects is to preserve more of the scientific work from the get-go
[9:21]  Horace Moody: yes Richard is right - first and foremost get the science done then worry about technology
[9:22]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: often today data and failed experiments are lost from the record, even if they had some original ditgital format
[9:22]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: we don't want the current science work to be a digital dark age when seen from the future
[9:22]  WhiteWizard Chemistry: Scientists should worry about the science ... someone else should (working with the scientists) think about the technology that makes lives easier for scientists
[9:22]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: I see some positive developments in terms of science communication
[9:23]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: one example is eSciDoc, a project in Germany to develop end-to-end communication - from lab notebook to publication and beyond
[9:23]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: http://www.escidoc-project.de/homepage.html
[9:23]  Horace Moody: As long as authors retain copyright - they don't have to worry about re-formatting their work :)
[9:23]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: I also think Fedora Commons presents a lot of opportunities in this area
[9:23]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: http://www.fedora-commons.org/
[9:24]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: as a mostly-technology guy these days, I'm interseted in gathering the best requirements so that the tools support the real goals!
[9:24]  Horace Moody: have you looked at the escidoc richard?
[9:24]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: So I agree with WhiteWizard
[9:24]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: What I'm concerned about is if we're not careful, often we end up with closed systems - like Facebook, or even Blackboard and WebCT
[9:25]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: Horace I have seen the eSciDoc people present, I think they're doing great work
[9:25]  Horace Moody: I think redundancy is a way to safeguard getting locked in
[9:25]  Horace Moody: is their work open to anyone
[9:25]  Duriel Akula: I would not mind to have a company making a profit with such a system
[9:25]  Duriel Akula: as long as the data was open to anyone
[9:25]  WhiteWizard Chemistry: and examples like Aordpress/Automattic provide excellent examples for profitable open source platforms
[9:26]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: as far as I know, they plan to share the Scholarly Workbench once it is developed
[9:26]  WhiteWizard Chemistry: oope Wordpress
[9:26]  Horace Moody: the company interface is interesting - for example ChemSpider
[9:26]  CW Underwood: I don't mind who makes what money, but I'd like to see the software on SourceForge...
[9:26]  Horace Moody: is a company but giving out database for free
[9:27]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: I think there are lots of different models, the main goal is that the information should be open to improve science collaboration and preservation
[9:27]  WhiteWizard Chemistry: There are models oand made available to other developers to build on top of
[9:27]  Rakerman Yellowjacket: Horace, do you want to move to Bill's presentation now?
[9:28]  Horace Moody: sure

Berci also liveblogged the session.

Does anyone know exactly what the availability of the eSciDoc Scholarly Workbench will be?  I'll have to contact them.

Previously:
August 27, 2007  Medicine 2.0
September 22, 2006  ECDL 2006 - DLSci06 - eSciDoc
September 27, 2005  Info Grid 2005 - Tuesday 27th, 09:45 - Rebuilding Information Services for the Digital Age

Comments

[Hari Jayaram]

This is a great discussion. Thanks for the pointers to escidoc.
I agree with the opinion that its best to develop something like this with stewardship from a company but along the lines of the open source model. That company can harness the vast pool of open source talent and yet make money by providing the solution and support to industry and maybe large academia for a fee.
I am a big fan of such guided open source projects like Java , Eclipse , Netbeans etc. It will be great to see an extensible , pluggable scientific documentation and e-lab notbook solution.

[Jean-Claude Bradley]

Thanks for presenting Richard!