A New Kind of Science Collaboration

Scientific American is running a major article on Science 2.0, or the use of Web 2.0 applications and techniques by scientists to collaborate and publish in new ways. "Under [the] radically transparent 'open notebook' approach, everything goes online: experimental protocols, successful outcomes, failed attempts, even discussions of papers being prepared for publication... The time stamps on every entry not only establish priority but allow anyone to track the contributions of every person, even in a large collaboration." One project profiled is MIT's OpenWetWare, launched in 2005. The wiki-based project now encompasses more than 6,100 Web pages edited by 3,000 registered users. Last year the NSF awarded OpenWetWare a 5-year grant to "transform the platform into a self-sustaining community independent of its current base at MIT... the grant will also support creation of a generic version of OpenWetWare that other research communities can use." The article also gives air time to Science 2.0 skeptics. "It's so antithetical to the way scientists are trained," one Duke University geneticist said, though he eventually became a convert.

Science 2.0?

[regularstranger]

I love the idea of sharing information in this manner, but do we really have to call it Science 2.0? People might think that Science 1.0 was buggy.

Let's have a poll

[arotenbe]

Who else looked at the title and went, "Oh God, Stephen Wolfram is involved, RUN LIKE HELL"?

Re:Science 2.0?

[doppe1]

No, no. Science 1.0 was the development version, Science 2.0 is the buggy version. I'm waiting for at least Science 2.1.