Science and The Internet: Open Notebook Science
Published by Is Open Notebook Science the way of the future?
If you’re surfing the Internet and stumble upon a discussion whose participants think (for example) that it “would be great to hear about workflows in ONS” odds are you have stumbled on an Open Notebook Science discussion. Open Notebook Science (or ONS) is the complete publishing of lab notebooks on the Internet. And by complete I mean putting out experimental data (including data from failed experiments) on the Internet in almost real time. The idea, of course is that by putting it all out there, the scientific community will be able to generate more ideas, faster. It is also, according to at least one scientist a rare thing in some scientific circles—or as he puts it ”raw data sharing as is still a rarity of amongst experimenters.”
So is it working? Yes and no. Some scientists point out that if “your field is ‘hot’ enough, you can be sure someone will use those ideas to their own benefit, very likely at your expense” but that, on the other hand, the Open Notebook can be quite useful for publicizing yourself and asking general questions about method. Others think that people are too busy with their own work to publish someone else’s. And still others think ONS has incredible potential to at least alert supervisors to easily preventable mistakes. And some are even hopeful that funding agencies will take a greater interest in the Open Notebook.
Despite the early enthusiasm, the response of the academic community has, thus far, been underwhelming. It seems that researchers want the benefit of open access but are somewhat reluctant to put their own results online and, worse still, there does not appear to be a single favorite site people go to. Or even several favorite sites. (So if you have never heard of ONS until now, this is probably why.)
Still, some magazines (like the Scientific American) are taking note of the Open Notebook even while noting that “the acceptance of any such measure would require a big change in the culture of academic science”. But if blogger-scientists are right and the funding is there Open Notebook Science may take off.
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On February 11, 2010 at 6:01 am
i agree with your views
nice note
On February 11, 2010 at 6:07 am
good post…nice share..
On February 11, 2010 at 6:20 am
great post^^
On February 11, 2010 at 7:00 am
nice post!
On February 11, 2010 at 7:06 am
Wonderful info. Thanks for this
On February 11, 2010 at 7:19 am
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On February 11, 2010 at 7:28 am
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On February 11, 2010 at 8:39 am
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On February 11, 2010 at 8:48 am
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On February 11, 2010 at 9:07 am
excellent share. very interesting read. Thanks for sharing this great stuff. Cheers
On February 11, 2010 at 10:52 am
Inna – thanks for highlighting ONS and providing an overview of what is being discussed.
For people trying to decide whether they should get involved and to what extent, I think looking at specific implementations and trying to imagine if their projects are compatible is more useful then looking at adoption rates. If your projects involve intellectual property protection and your collaborators are not interested in sharing then there is probably not a good fit. But if you’re looking to find new collaborators with an open mindset then it might be worth investigating. If you like the idea of more people using your results more quickly that’s also a plus. We get about 100 queries a day about individual solubility measurements, coming mainly through Wikipedia and Google.
As for funding, we’ve been lucky to get a small amount from Submeta and a few companies for a contest, which resulted in a book where the students involved have their bio and picture displayed. We’ll have to see if traditional funding agencies will also show support.
On February 11, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Brief and informative. Congrats for making to the hotlist! Clicked you “liked it”
On February 11, 2010 at 1:05 pm
great share
On February 11, 2010 at 1:07 pm
This article has been written with great skill. I”m new here and will eventually read more of your articles.
On February 11, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Great share
On February 12, 2010 at 12:43 am
Nice Share
On February 12, 2010 at 1:22 am
great article
On February 12, 2010 at 11:01 am
Thanks for sharing new knowledge. This sure can be useful to scientists.
On February 12, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Hats off to you for sharing such a wonderful information.
On February 12, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Nicely and professionally organized post. I am in the field too.
On February 12, 2010 at 7:17 pm
cool post
On February 12, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Nice read!
On February 13, 2010 at 12:33 am
Thank you everyone for your gracious comments.
Jean-Claude–
What you say has merit and I am did not, in any way, mean to dispute your points. It does, indeed, appear that at present ONS is indeed being used to ease collaboration between a finite number of individuals. A kind of open e-mail online. That of course is somewhat ironic given that the development of the Internet itself was spurred, at least in part, by the hope that it would make scientific collaboration easier.
Regards,
Inna
On February 13, 2010 at 3:02 am
I think we are all qualified for that…
On February 19, 2010 at 6:57 am
Very interesting topic Inna, thanks for sharing.
On February 20, 2010 at 3:45 pm
nice article and thanks for sharing information.
On February 22, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Inna – I think there is an important conceptual difference between ONS and email. When people write email I think they expect the others in the conversation to read and absorb the whole message linearly. With ONS, we don’t typically expect people to read our experiments after we post them. These are more like building blocks that may remain buried for an indeterminate amount of time. The important point is that when someone does need to use them and subjects them to scrutiny – they should answer the questions a researcher would ask as completely as possible. Obviously discoverability is critical for this to work so we spend a lot of time creating portals for increasing the probability that people who might need the information will find it.
On February 23, 2010 at 1:56 am
Jean-Claude–
That’s a good point. Thank you for making it.
Regards,
Inna
On February 23, 2010 at 1:56 am
highly relevant
On December 13, 2010 at 11:54 am
Nice post, Thanks for your sharing.
On January 23, 2011 at 8:23 am
Es ist alles sehr informativ für mich.
On March 30, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Nice I’m currently reading a article about the different Open Notebook standards and found this interessting.
On April 7, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Nice Post!
Best Wishes From Berlin DJ
On June 19, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Gute informative Seite, danke.