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Bravo. Each item full of meaning – what the describe, what hasn't changed, what they forebode. But the kicker is the B Dalton executive, full of passion but out of a job – the bookseller is gone, despite his belief in "inevitability."
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Nothing new, but all in one place, I suppose. "The emergence of synthetic biology, and off-shoots such as DIYbio, make the need for a rigorous, sustained and mature approach for assessing, and preparing for, the broad range of associated dangers and risks all the more pressing."
An author ID system is essential to the future of science publishing
Nature recently wrote an article on a proposed Author ID system. I find this momentous.
In my vision of the Future of Science Publishing, which is highly based on the way we currently use the Social Web, one of the key sticking points was the need to authenticate authors. By authenticating authors in a kind of OpenID way, authenticity, reputation, citations, publications, and activity streams could be automatically managed.
What really excited me is that this author ID system, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), is backed by 23 organizations, including Thomson Reuters, Nature
Publishing Group, Elsevier, ProQuest, Springer, CrossRef, the British
Library and the Wellcome Trust. In short, those most threatened by the dismantling of the science publishing system are taking an active role in reforming it.
Furthermore, these companies recognize that this system not only brings recognition to authors in huge multi-author projects, but "could also be assigned to data sets they helped to generate, comments
on their colleagues' blog posts or unpublished draft papers, edits of
Wikipedia entries and much else besides."
That's brilliant.
They also mention the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a unique indetifier for papers, books, and "scholarly publication." An ORCID and a DOI (and an immutable time stamp) is all that's need to release science publication from its current story-contained-in-single-paper so that each morsel of info can be labeled with a OCID/DOI/Time stamp and be linkable, comment-able, embed-able, feed-able, and search-able. Just as Tim Berners-Lee intended.
While this is a promising direction, I think the current edifice of science publishing is still going to be around for a while, so outfits like Mendeley will still add a layer of value for some time to come.
So, what do you think of this development? Do you think ORCID will radically change the way we share science information?
links for 2010-01-07
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Good one, @miker. Social app-usage. [via @mtrends]
links for 2010-01-05
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Oversupply? Is academia a demand or supply-driven business?
"With colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature is bleaker than ever before."
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So true.
"But this is old news. What gets me about this piece, I realized, is how it's framed. It equates "the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature" with "the academic job market:" there's no sense that Ph.D.s might be capable of doing SOMETHING ELSE with all that knowledge. Demonstrably wrong, guys."
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Institutional science needs to change
I was having lunch with some old ex-lab friends. Unlike me, who left the lab at the end of the 90s, all three of them have kept on doing research and medicine and have their own labs with students, post-docs, and techs. The good news is that their research is progressing, the bad news is that funding is tighter than ever.
I had asked them who was writing a grant (of course, knowing that one always is writing some grant). There was an awkward pause as all three of them seemed to be lost in their thoughts, then they gave me an update of where things were at, since last I was in science, listing some stats to show how things were getting tighter.
When I left research, I had the naïve idea that I would no longer need to hustle for money. But, we all know, the biz world is just the same. Yet, for sure, the biz world seems to have a multitude of revenue and funding options that don't seem to be available to institutional scientists.
I feel that the whole endeavor of Science (I come from a biology background, so my thoughts are around that area, really) has been stuck in the 60s – the way we fund science, the expectations of the apprenticeship (PhD and Postdoc), the publishing and reputation cycle, the job progression – all seem to have been built in a model that came into being in the science boom of the 50s and 60s and really hasn't changed.
Am I missing something? I've been out 10 years, but it seems like nothing has improved. Funding is tighter, people still can't get academic jobs, and publishing is getting more onerous.
How do I envision the future of institutional science?
I'm not sure.
I've mentioned how science publishing could change, taking cues from the current way we use the Social Web. I think DIYBio points to how science could change how we explore the natural world and who does it. And, brilliant folks, like at Biocurious and Pink Army Coop, are looking at ways to diversify how we fund and participate in funding the future of science.
In summary, the business of institutional science is sclerotic and the clues to how we move forward are right in front of us. And, as usual, institutional culture is in the way of this change.
Do you think the way we do science should change? Can it? Will it in our lifetime? How do you envision the future of science or are we fine the way we are?
Image by caterina
links for 2009-12-31
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Brilliant. I've felt this way since before 9/11. Read this article. And here's a great quote from it: "The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we — and our leaders — need to react with indomitability, the kind of strength shown by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II."
links for 2009-12-30
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Yes, yes, YES! Just tells me that there were too many folks in the newspaper industry. Weren't the 50s really good to newspapers? "The good news: It's a great opportunity. The next decade will give birth to new forms of reporting, more in tune with today's technology and news consumption habits." Newspapers are dead! Long live newspapers!
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Cool. "B. dentium's genome also reveals why it is so hard to get rid of. It sports a number of genes that increase their expression in acid environments, which probably help it survive in dental cavities, where acid destroys tooth enamel. B. dentium may even have evolved to protect itself against dental hygiene: When Ventura and his colleagues grew the bug in a variety of mouthwashes and antiseptics, they found that it ramped up the activity of several genes, including those for proteins that bind up toxic compounds and render them harmless."
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[via @rnaworld]
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[via @rnaworld]
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"Foursquare sucks the fun and soul out of a cool technology."
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[via @cityferret]
links for 2009-12-24
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Our local raptor
links for 2009-12-23
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Heh.
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"A proposed author ID system is gaining widespread support, and could help lay the foundation for an academic-reward system less heavily tied to publications and citations."
Whoa. This is timely, considering some of the negative thoughts of the business of science I've been having for quite some time (more on that later). This is great news, but I'm concerned that Thomspon-Reuters is behind it.
links for 2009-12-17
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I had a conversation today about WWII. Odd to see this story pop up.