Scholarly communication and the web

With linked data a user can assemble a workflow in minutes to integrate data and call upon a variety of services from search and computation to visualisation. While the linked data movement has persuaded public data providers to deliver RDF, we are now beginning to see assembly of scripts and workflows that consume it – and the sharing of these on myExperiment. We believe this is an important glimpse of future research practice: the ability to assemble with ease experiments that are producing and consuming this form of rich scientific content.

Discussion

There is an open debate about the extent to which open publication should be mandated through the project lifecycle. A common pattern is to share artefacts with friends and colleagues and then make them available more broadly at time of publication. myExperiment supports this model, providing privacy and facilitating openness. In contrast, some sites like openwetware.org oblige their members to make everything public and still enjoy considerable adoption, exemplifying the open science approach.

Scholarly communication is evolving (Hey and Hey 2006) but the traditional academic publishing system has reinforced silos and made communication between disciplines more difficult. In contrast, important challenges like climate change research, which cut across different research communities, demand a social infrastructure to support resource sharing in large teams, and new shared artefacts. With this there also needs to be a culture of sharing and of making shared artefacts re-usable. It is clear that the behaviour of researchers is closely related to incentive models, and these are currently set up around traditional publications. The creation of data and digital methods needs also to be rewarded if they are to flourish as a powerful enabler of new research.

myExperiment shares many characteristics with social networking sites for scientists and also with open repositories and contemporary content management systems, but it also exemplifies some important principles in developing Science 2.0 solutions (DeRoure and Goble 2009). One is the focus on providing a specific solution to meet the immediate requirements of its users and to make it highly configurable to the immediate needs of new communities. Another is that the user can come to myExperiment and find it familiar to use, but equally the myExperiment functionality can be appropriated and integrated in the familiar working environment of the user, be it loosely coupled or tightly integrated. Through linked data, myExperiment realises the network effects of scientific data as well as the network effects of the scientific community. It is an example of the kinds of systems that enable Science 2.0.

References

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