Week 10 (Open Science)

Science in general is a topic that goes way over my head. Learning chemistry and biology in high school was already an immensely difficult task for me to even comprehend, however, understanding how research papers are submitted and published is a different matter.

I find it conceptually quite interesting how scientists have utilized technology (most of which they create themselves) to further their knowledge through collaboration. From the evolution of language to the printing press, science has seen jumps in production the same way media has been effected by major inventions like the printing press or even (to a lesser extent) television and radio. It can be seen quite clearly the effects of (somewhat) open and free data, with the example of geneticists in the 80's (Pisani, 2011) revealing the great leaps and bounds people can make when working together. Perhaps something politicians could learn from.

These teachings are furthered when looking at the systems put in place when attempting to publish a formal research paper. The peer-reviewed system put in place by most if not all scientific journals and magazines is, in my opinion, one of the most legitimate forms of publishing; where, much unlike the internet, people who take their jobs and the papers submitted seriously are brought into the position of being able to accept or reject your findings. One of the best features of this process is the critique they give when rejecting a paper allowing for proper amendments that usually make the paper (in general) better. My point here is that the scientific community, while not the fastest mode of publication, have put into practice for a number of decades, a system that the rest of the world could learn from. Websites like Wikipedia have popped up in the last two decades or so which follow a very similar process of peer-reviewed submissions, and have revealed great results.

That is not to say the scientific world could not learn a thing or two from communications experts, with research papers going through an overzealous and tedious process which seems to be achievable in much fewer than three years (as required by Gavin of the realclimate blog) if more widely distributed to reviewers. Overall, I think that if scientists completely utilized the communicative abilities of the internet they could develop a system accepted by the entire world.

Main References:

 Pisani, Elizabeth (2011) ‘Medical science will benefit from the research of crowds’, The Guardian, available online at, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/medical-research-data-sharing >

Schmidt, Gavin (2011) ‘From Blog to Science’, RealClimate, available online at < http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/from-blog-to-science/ >

Seed (2011) ‘On Science Transfer’, Seed, available online at < http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/on_science_transfer >