Comments on: Web 2.0 for Biologists–Are any of the current tools worth using?

By: Mike Chelen

Mike Chelen — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:52:21 +0000

Many Eyes comes in handy for making interactive web visualizations. Trying to use it like a social network doesn’t really work as well.

By: Brian H

Brian H — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:28:06 +0000

David;
yes, I could have been clearer by specifying: commenting -on other people’s articles without asking for help. And tagging: other people’s work and articles without specific expectation of going back to them yourself.

But on sites with strong controversy and some political fireworks behind the scenes, the comments (thorough and researched down through illiterate invective) flow like a river!

I personally quickly gave up on tagging, and am bemused and mystified by the significance and delight some seem to find in “tag clouds”, etc.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:40:32 +0000

Commenting encompasses many different things, not just altruism. You may want to point out the holes in a competitor's paper, or note how their results confirm your own. As an editor of a methods journal, the few comments we see are purely done out of self interest--I can't get this technique to work, can somebody help me out? Think about the way people do product reviews on a site like Amazon. People seem much more motivated to write a review on a product where they've had a bad experience and feel ripped-off than one where they have an adequate experience. Altruism is nice, but there are definite negatives that overwhelm it--fear of competition, fear of committing career suicide by publicly criticizing the work of someone who may sit on your grant, hiring or tenure committee, and fear of wasting time. There's no career credit given for being nice. You can spend an hour writing a comment, or put that hour into writing your next paper. Also remember that the vast majority of scientists work in the private sector at for-profit companies. Only a small minority work in the ivory tower of academia, and even there you've got heavy career pressure and institutional pressure to come up with profitable patents. Very few are likely to compromise these things for the sake of helping out a stranger. Tagging is a slightly different issue. If it was a good organizational system, it wold be worth doing for yourself, and the altruism of sharing your tags would be an added bonus. But tagging is a terrible and inefficient way to organize your material, which makes it harder to justify the altruism. As far as reader notifications, I've written a recent piece on how the long shelf-life and asynchronous timing of access to science papers has a negative effect on commenting. You can see it here.

By: Brian H

Brian H — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:11:55 +0000

Commenting and tagging are related; both are altruistic activities with no short-term payoff. Even long-term, no personal benefit is likely from any particular action; only the contribution to the overall “mass” of accumulating info in accessible format is of value.

The wish-list item this suggests is an AI tool that generates relevant tags and (perhaps) provides the commenter with updated feedback on # of readers and any responses/uses of the comment. Attention is the primo scarce commodity and valued payoff, and the door to any and all other benefits of involvement.

By: The Fear and Exhilaration of Breaking New Ground « Social Works

The Fear and Exhilaration of Breaking New Ground « Social Works — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:07:05 +0000

[...] the wrong filters? I went back to the web for more research. I found a fair amount of chatter like this and this related to the scientific community’s adoption of social networking, so the topic [...]

By: Scientists Still Not Joining Social Networks « The Scholarly Kitchen

Scientists Still Not Joining Social Networks « The Scholarly Kitchen — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:57:43 +0000

[...] year, I spent a lot of time exploring the many new social networks for scientists that hit the market. At the time, my conclusions were that most, if not all, failed to offer [...]

By: PLoS Releases Article-level Metrics « The Scholarly Kitchen

PLoS Releases Article-level Metrics « The Scholarly Kitchen — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:49:52 +0000

[...] These figures are not surprising given the low level of reader comments on PLoS papers and the low priority scientists give to professional blogging. The fact that PLoS released the data at all is laudatory and fits with their general ethos of [...]

By: A response to a response « A Man With A Ph.D.

A response to a response « A Man With A Ph.D. — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:31:34 +0000

[...] (found via Bora’s blog). It’s good to see that many of his conclusions echo my own (here too), that the big problems are a lack of time and incentive. He offers some potential solutions, [...]

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:52:46 +0000

Andrew, I may indeed be missing the point–sometimes I feel like I’m way too old for this stuff. But I would argue that repeating experiments and going through peer review have clear and definite results that can help one’s career. It’s not as obvious that any of the current social networking offerings are going to be as helpful.

This comment seems contradictory though, given your later call for open journals and open peer review–”Do we have time to judge the existing literature bearing in mind that 95% of it is junk”–isn’t that what we pay editors to do for us, spend their time sifting through the massive quantities of submissions to pull out the quality papers? If you’re already pressed for time judging the vetted publications of today, how are you ever going to cope in an open situation where the slush pile of papers increases massively?

I also strongly disagree with this statement–”open journals with open peer review would reduce the current political nature of scientific publication.” Sorry, no, every online community that I’ve ever experienced is highly politicized. Opening up journals would just change the nature of the politics involved, not eliminate them altogether. Go spend some time with the debate between the inclusionists and the deleters over at Wikipedia and tell me how well they’ve eliminated politics.

But your main point is accurate. Most of this stuff is useless without a critical mass of participants, and that’s the real catch-22.

By: Andrew Dalby

Andrew Dalby — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:11:47 +0000

An interesting talk but one that really misses the point of web 2.0. You are right to say none of us have much time for blogging.

But do we have time for spending pointless hours in the lab repeating experiments already done which do not work? Do we have time to play the political games of peer review? Do we have time to judge the existing literature bearing in mind that 95% of it is junk (That is John Ziman and not me).

Social networking for literature allows us to build a concensus, lab diaries could help reduce the time at the bench and open journals with open peer review would reduce the current political nature of scientific publication.

There are many good things we can create once you get a critical mass of people moving over. Of course there will be a considerable inertia, people do not like change, scientists least of all.