nodalpoint.org - A short trial period in science publishing - Comments

tipping point 2

PedroBeltrao — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 09:32:27 -0400

Thanks for the flattering words ;) but I would credit Timo Hannay and Chris Surridge for driving the change from the publishers side. Their initiatives (Nature Blogs, Nature Network, Connotea, PLoS ONE, etc) are the ones changing people's mind about web technologies. The blogs at ScienceBlogs and seed have also been very important.
About 2007, well I hope so, but it is really hard to predict. What we need now are examples of successful projects developed in the open. I am not ignoring pioneer projects like BioPerl but it would be great to have also discovery science. If open projects are really efficient then this would tip further the scales and drive more people to work this way.

About the Nodalpoint meeting and getting funds. Here in Europe, Marie Curie fellowships sometimes fund these events but it would need to be something bigger than just one conference. We could try to apply for a grant to develop Nodalpoint as an open science platform for bioinformatics. We could have a look at the grant application from OpenWetWare and see if would be feasible to do something similar.

Tipping points

Neil — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:55:27 -0400

2007 is the year, trust me...

Didn't we say that in 2001 ;)

No, I agree - things are moving quickly and in an agreeable direction. This can only accelerate as more young scientists come through (and more old scientists retire or die). In fact, I think it will soon be time to organise the inaugural "Nodalpoint Science 2.0 conference" - now, where to get some funding?

I would even risk a

Greg — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 06:03:21 -0400

would even risk a potential controversial idea. What if journal editors could use their blogs to post about interesting research questions ?

I think the correct Web 2.0/Science 2.0 terminology would be "disruptive idea" :)

Thank you for posting your experience at MSB on nodalpoint, I think that ultimately you'll be recognized as a pioneer in exploring the possibilities of web based publishing systems for science (aka weblogs). I'm interested to see if you agree, but my intuition tells me that we are currently witnessing a tipping point with respect to uptake of blogs/wikis/social networking etc. by working scientists as tools to improve the process of doing scientific research. 2007 is the year, trust me...

Personal views

Thomas — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:32:01 -0400

The suggestion of having research proposals in a blog is tempting. Could be delicate, given that editors have access to confidential information. Let's think about this one ;-)

As for the role of blogging for editors, it is true that editors can (or should) express their personal views in a blog. On the other hand, they inevitably represent the journal at the same time: again, the path to follow can be narrow...

In any case, happy that you liked your stay. It was a great pleasure having you around!
Thomas

Nature blogs

PedroBeltrao — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:39:43 -0400

I mostly read Nascent, Nautilus and Peer-to-Peer because they are great and closer to my interests (web tech and publishing) but I have seen that some of the Nature blogs have been covering conferences and starting interesting discussions. The discussion about social software in Methagora and the post on Nature Medicine 2.0 are good examples of this. One of the first blogs that Nature started had a bad habit of mostly posting links to the journals' papers but the new blogs are doing more interesting things now.

Added

alf — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:03:17 -0400

I've added The Seven Stones to http://planet.nature.com/

Do any of the other blogs listed there post the kind of thing you're talking about?

Nice idea

Neil — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:20:45 -0400

What if journal editors could use their blogs to post about interesting research questions

Well that would be great! They could tell us what they'd like to see in the journal. Or it would provide a forum to discuss research findings from published articles, spurring people on to do the next great experiment. I alluded to this in a recent blog post about open discussion of hypotheses.

Thanks for this interesting post.

A short trial period in science publishing

PedroBeltrao — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:30:12 -0400

During the last three months I have been working as a trainee at the Molecular Systems Biology journal. My contract is know finished I thought I would post about my short experience in publishing for anyone possibly interested is testing this career path. To avoid any misuse, what I am writing is solely my opinion and does not reflect any position of the journal I worked for.My main motivation to try this out was my interest in science publishing and the scientific process in general.
We are at a particular interesting stage of transition from publishing on paper to publishing on the web and most publishers are trying to find ways to best cope with the change.

So what goes on in a journal ?