“The massive impact of science on our collective and individual lives has decreased the willingness of many to accept the pronouncements of scientists unless they can verify the strength of the underlying evidence for themselves. [...] It is vital that science is not seen to hide behind closed laboratory doors, but engages seriously with the public.”
—Open your minds and share your results, says Geoffry Boulton, asking that scientists make data available to the public and to other researchers, because “Science’s capacity for self-correction comes from this openness to scrutiny and challenge”.
Science as an open enterprise is a report from the Royal Society that highlights 6 main changes needed to improve the openess of science:
- “a shift away from a research culture where data is viewed as a private preserve;
- expanding the criteria used to evaluate research to give credit for useful data communication and novel ways of collaborating;
- the development of common standards for communicating data;
- mandating intelligent openness for data relevant to published scientific papers;
- strengthening the cohort of data scientists needed to manage and support the use of digital data;
- the development and use of new software tools to automate and simplify the creation and exploitation of datasets.”
Science Publishers vs Scientists
guardian.co.ukAre academic publishers the enemies of science? That’s what a recent Guardian headline says.
At issue for critics is a publisher-backed bill in the US Congress called the The Research Works Act. The bill would give publishers increased copyright control over publicly financed research and the papers and data that come from it.
Via the Guardian:
The USA’s main funding agency for health-related research is the National Institutes of Health, with a $30bn annual budget. The NIH has a public access policy that says taxpayer-funded research must be freely accessible online. This means that members of the public, having paid once to have the research done, don’t have to pay for it again when they read it – a wholly reasonable policy, and one with enormous humanitarian implications because it means the results of medical research are made freely available around the world…
…But what’s good for science isn’t necessarily good for science publishers, whose interests have drifted far out of alignment with ours. Under the old model, publishers become the owners of the papers they publish, holding the copyright and selling copies around the world – a useful service in pre-internet days. But now that it’s a trivial undertaking to make a paper globally available, there is no reason why scientists need yield copyright to publishers.
And so we turn our sites over to the New York Times as they profile the “open science” movement that bypasses the traditional academic publishing workflow in favor of releasing research on various sites for early and immediate peer review and distribution:
Dr. [Michael] Nielsen and other advocates for “open science” say science can accomplish much more, much faster, in an environment of friction-free collaboration over the Internet. And despite a host of obstacles, including the skepticism of many established scientists, their ideas are gaining traction.
Open-access archives and journals like arXiv and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have sprung up in recent years. GalaxyZoo, a citizen-science site, has classified millions of objects in space, discovering characteristics that have led to a raft of scientific papers.
On the collaborative blog MathOverflow, mathematicians earn reputation points for contributing to solutions; in another math experiment dubbed the Polymath Project, mathematicians commenting on the Fields medalist Timothy Gower’s blog in 2009 found a new proof for a particularly complicated theorem in just six weeks.
And a social networking site called ResearchGate — where scientists can answer one another’s questions, share papers and find collaborators — is rapidly gaining popularity.
If open science sounds a lot like open source, I think that’s part of the point. Online collaboration and peer production disrupts a legacy industry while simultaneously launching something new. To date, venture capital from the same funders of Facebook, Twitter and eBay is beginning to fund these projects, according to the Times.
Both articles are well worth the read. And if you happen to be in North Carolina, the sixth annual ScienceOnline Conference kicks off Thursday at North Carolina State University
The first Artist In Residence at SETI Institute creates haunting alien shapes
io9.comIn creating an “open science workforce”:
This link is a signal for a forecast I’m thinking about: a way of bringing people without formal science backgrounds to get excited about science and make contributions in unique/clever ways by creating new jobs within scientific companies/agencies that may not have been thought about before.
Example 1: a physicist may not think there’s anything for a designer to do at an accelerator laboratory, but if you point to the interfaces/visualizations that physicists often create just to communicate their data, they then realize there really are opportunities for motivated, creative people in their workplace. Usually, they’re so used to working without the help of outsiders, that it’s just not even a consideration day-to-day.
Example 2: Eri Gentry (of BioCurious) and myself (Ariel Waldman of Spacehack.org) both had an opportunity to work at a science-focused company and that’s what shifted our perceptions and inspired us to get involved and make an impact in science. Had we not had those opportunities, we wouldn’t be working in making science more open today.
“If you set out to solve a problem, there's no guarantee you will succeed, [...] But different people have different aptitudes and they know different tricks… it turned out their combined efforts can be much quicker.”
—Open science: a future shaped by shared experience.
The concept of open science is really interesting.
How did academic publishers acquire these feudal powers?
monbiot.comThe fail of open publishing…
Open-access publishing, despite its promise, and some excellent resources such as the Public Library of Science and the physics database arxiv.org, has failed to displace the monopolists. In 1998 the Economist, surveying the opportunities offered by electronic publishing, predicted that “the days of 40% profit margins may soon be as dead as Robert Maxwell.”(14) But in 2010 Elsevier’s operating profit margins were the same (36%) as they were in 1998(15).
Don't just mourn, act.
aaronsw.archiveteam.orgThe Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator
Functioning synapse created using carbon nanotubes: Devices might be used in brain prostheses or synthetic brains
sciencedaily.com“For Jonathan Joshi, a USC Viterbi Ph.D. student who is a co-author of the paper, the interdisciplinary approach to the problem was key to the initial progress. Joshi said that working with Zhou and his group of nanotechnology researchers provided the ideal dynamic of circuit technology and nanotechnology.
“The interdisciplinary approach is the only approach that will lead to a solution. We need more than one type of engineer working on this solution,” said Joshi. “We should constantly be in search of new technologies to solve this problem.””
Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.
wwws.whitehouse.govIf anyone is still doing these petitions, here’s a good one to support.
Science Blogging
I’ve been at Science Online 2011 in London this weekend. One hot topic of conversation during Day One was science blogging and how it relates to science publishing in the form of journals.
There was much hand-wringing yesterday, during a panel discussion on the ‘Arsenic Life’ story (see these links), where science bloggers seemed exasperated by the fact that what they write in blogs is not linked with the research they discuss. After all they write some great stuff and it would be great if anyone reading the paper could read their dire warnings about the reliability of the conclusions*. At moments some on the the panel and in the audience even seemed to get close to suggesting that their blog posts should be placed on a level with peer-reviewed publications.
The ‘Arsenic Life’ tale is one where several things than could go wrong, did go wrong. The results were over-hyped, the scientists were unresponsive to criticism and the peer-review system broke down. However the vast majority of scientific results are reported pretty well and without such catastrophic failures of the system. Did blogging help? Yes and it may have been instrumental in bringing the issues to light. The scientists who wrote about the story on their blogs, did so in a journalistic act, not a scientific one. They are free to publish rebuttal papers and get a peer-reviewed response into the literature in due course. I’d be keen to know if anyone is doing this.
I think what many science bloggers forget is that they represent the very thin end of the science-blogging wedge. There are many research scientists out there writing blogs about their work and that of others. They share that part of the blogosphere with many more science bloggers who are non-scientists. Many interested amateurs and members of the public are writing about science and some are doing a very good job of it. (Some researchers do a bad job it too, by the way).
Whilst I agree with many that we should move to a more open and transparent publication process in academia, I don’t believe that blogging should be part of it - certainly not in its current form. Blogging represents a free and liberating way to share ideas and thoughts. It is unencumbered by regulation and this is exactly why I think many scientists enjoy it and find it useful. Perhaps one tantalising aspect of science blogging is that it feels like scientific lab reporting for many people - but it isn’t. You may chose to write your blog with all the rigour and finesse of a publishable work but it is still a blog. I suppose it comes down to trust and verifiability.
One can imagine ways to legitimise and promote blogging into a state closer to the academic model (without turning it into journalism). Something more akin to social networking than peer-review seems like a good idea. I would point anyone thinking about these ideas to the Research Blogging network which is collecting blogs about peer-reviewed research. Perhaps a blog journal, with editors and peer-review would be viable - does such a thing exist?
Science blogging is growing but the credibility of the few should not be used to elevate the many non-professional science blogs to a recognised, academic status. Science bloggers are doing something great: they are providing insight into the way science works and telling a more narrative story about their results and their field of work.
Another of yesterday’s sessions was about storytelling (It was hosted by @BoraZ and @mistersugar) - one theme emerging was that more scientists need to tell stories to help engage people and this is a crucial point. The science bloggers are acting outside of the scientific process and telling their own stories. This is a great thing to do and it doesn’t need to get incorporated into that process. It is great because it is distinct and unrestrained. I say let the science blogging continue on all sides, and in all forms and leave it separate from the process of peer-review and publication. there is no need to further muddy those waters.
*The idea of using trackbacks to allow bloggers to connect with things they discuss is not new, and you can in fact trackback to papers (e.g. on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/help/trackback) if you blog about them.
The Neuro Bureau
neurobureau.projects.nitrc.org“The Neuro Bureau is a forum and collaborative initiative that supports “open neuroscience” — embracing the ideas that data, methods, and ideas can be freely shared. Translating the ethos of open neuroscience into action is an exciting challenge to the way we often work and publish.
The Neuro Bureau’s immediate goal is to establish a spirit and forum for open neuroscience, and to facilitate the translation of that ethos into action by conducting successful large open interdisciplinary collaborative efforts — such as releasing the preprocessed version of the ADHD-200 competition dataset.”
“During the introduction [at BioBarCamp] many people expressed an interest in “Open Science”, “Open Data”, or some other open stuff, yet it was already pretty clear that many people meant many different things by this. I think for me the most striking outcome of [a session to define it] was that not only is this a radically new concept for many people but that many people don’t have any background understanding of open source software either which can make the discussion totally impenetrable to them. This, in my view strengthens the need for having some clear brands, or standards, that are easy to point to and easy to sign up to (or not).”
—Science Commons » Blog Archive » What’s open science?Opinion: Transparency in Science Publishing by Rebecca Lawrence
the-scientist.comF1000 Research’s “publish first, peer review later” model with its recognition of the referees’ contributions is one of the latest efforts in improving transparency and eliminating delays in science publishing.
A proposal for a really fast statistics journal
I know we need a new journal like we need a good poke in the eye. But I got fired up by the recent discussion of open science (by Paul Krugman and others) and the seriously misguided Research Works Act- that aimed to make it illegal to deposit published papers funded by the government in Pubmed central or other open access databases.
I also realized that I spend a huge amount of time/effort on the following things: (1) waiting for reviews (typically months), (2) addressing reviewer comments that are unrelated to the accuracy of my work - just adding citations to referees papers or doing additional simulations, and (3) resubmitting rejected papers to new journals - this is a huge time suck since I have to reformat, etc. Furthermore, If I want my papers to be published open-access I also realized I have to pay at minimum $1,000 per paper.
So I thought up my criteria for an ideal statistics journal. It would be accurate, have fast review times, and not discriminate based on how interesting an idea is. I have found that my most interesting ideas are the hardest ones to get published. This journal would:
- Be open-access and free to publish your papers there. You own the copyright on your work.
- The criteria for publication would be: (1) it has to do with statistics, computation, or data analysis, (2) is the work is technically correct.
- We would accept manuals, reports of new statistical software, and full length research articles.
- There would be no page limits/figure limits.
- The journal would be published exclusively online.
- We would guarantee reviews within 1 week and publication immediately upon review if criteria (1) and (2) are satisfied
- Papers would receive a star rating from the editor - 0-5 stars. There would be a place for readers to also review articles
- All articles would be published with a tweet/like button so they can be easily distributed
To achieve such a fast review time, here is how it would work. We would have a large group of Associate Editors (hopefully 30 or more). When a paper was received, it would be assigned to an AE. The AEs would agree to referee papers within 2 days. They would use a form like this:
- Review of: Jeff’s Paper
- Technically Correct: Yes
- About statistics/computation/data analysis: Yes
- Number of Stars: 3 stars
- 3 Strengths of Paper (1 required):
- This paper revolutionizes statistics
- 3 Weakness of Paper (1 required):
- * The proof that this paper revolutionizes statistics is pretty weak
- because he only includes one example.
That’s it, super quick, super simple, so it wouldn’t be hard to referee. As long as the answers to the first two questions were yes, it would be published.
So now here’s my questions:
- Would you ever consider submitting a paper to such a journal?
- Would you be willing to be one of the AEs for such a journal?
- Is there anything you would change?
‘Open Science’ Challenges Journal Tradition With Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com
nytimes.com(via Instapaper)
“professional curation and preservation of data is, like professional publishing, neither easy nor inexpensive.”
sounds about as out of touch as the music industry 10 years ago.
