Scientific American has finally posted my Science 2.0 story on its Web site. As the introduction explains, this is actually an experiment in getting reader feedback well before the print version appears. So I hope you will all take advantage of that opportunity. And I hope you will also publicize the link as widely as you can–on your blogs, wikis and websites, among your fellow workshop and FOOcamp attendees, wherever. Let’s make the experiment a success!
For your convenience, here is the Web posting introduction:
Welcome to a Scientific American experiment in “networked journalism,” in which readers-you-get to collaborate with the author to give a story its final form.
The article, below, is a particularly apt candidate for such an experiment: it’s my feature story on “Science 2.0,” which describes how researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science. The draft article appears here, several months in advance of its print publication, and we are inviting you to comment on it. Your inputs will influence the article’s content, reporting, perhaps even its point of view.
So consider yourself invited. Please share your thoughts about the promise and peril of Science 2.0.-just post your inputs in the Comment section below. To help get you started, here are some questions to mull over:
- What do you think of the article itself? Are there errors? Oversimplifications? Gaps?
- What do you think of the notion of “Science 2.0?” Will Web 2.0 tools really make science much more productive? Will wikis, blogs and the like be transformative, or will they be just a minor convenience?
- Science 2.0 is one aspect of a broader Open Science movement, which also includes Open-Access scientific publishing and Open Data practices. How do you think this bigger movement will evolve?
- Looking at your own scientific field, how real is the suspicion and mistrust mentioned in the article? How much do you and your colleagues worry about getting “scooped”? Do you have first-hand knowledge of a case in which that has actually happened?
- When young scientists speak out on an open blog or wiki, do they risk hurting their careers?
- Is “open notebook” science always a good idea? Are there certain aspects of a project that researchers should keep quite, at least until the paper is published?
–M. Mitchell Waldrop
A narrative history of personal computing and the Internet.
The story of the Santa Fe Institute and the emerging science of complex adaptive systems.
My first book—a study of artificial intelligence.
