Saturday, September 27, 2008

The future of research

An insighful talk by Carole Goble who is a professor in the the School of Computer Science in the University of Manchester

She touches to some very important key topics like: growth of scientific data and datasets, linking from full-text journals to database and multi-media content, increasing collaboration in research, open science, services, APIs and science mashups (including a Scopus example)

Evri introduces recommendation widget


Evri content recommendation widget is a good example of how to implement linking out cleverly. They need some improvements but the concept is a winner! (and should be implemented in STM world)

Friday, September 26, 2008

Thomson Reuters sues Zotero

After two years here is where we are: Zotero (open-source) is being sued via Stephen Abram.

After post: Follow the discussion at FF

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Thomson Reuters takes OpenCalais one step forward

OpenCalais moves into a new model with SemanticProxy via Paul Miller

It's also good to see "opening up" examples coming from a mega retailer.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Changing nature of scientific collaboration



"Dr Bly points to a paradox: the internet was created for and by scientists, yet they have been slow to embrace its more useful features. Nevertheless, serious science-blogging is on the rise. The Seed state of science report, to be published later this autumn, found that 35% of researchers surveyed say they use blogs. This figure may seem underwhelming, but it was almost nought just a few years ago. Once the legion of science bloggers reaches a critical threshold, the poultry problem will look paltry" Via Economist
photo by joon

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

World Wide Web Foundation

The foundation mission is :

  • "to advance One Web that is free and open,
  • to expand the Web's capability and robustness,
  • and to extend the Web's benefits to all people on the planet." Tim Berners Lee

Open notebook

Nature News interview with Jean-Claude Bradley and Cameron Neylon on "open notebook"

"Is this going to make traditional publishing obsolete?

Bradley: No. I'm publishing a paper [based on work that is openly available on my online notebook]. The notebook is about publishing data as quickly as possible. The paper is about synthesizing knowledge from all those results. But we want the best of both worlds, so we want to publish using traditional channels and we want to link back to the notebook."

Monday, September 15, 2008

Open platforms



Yahoo is on something that we should figure out how to incorporate into our DNAs, architecture and product development initiatives

"That's because YOS marries the best of what Yahoo is with the best of what's happening on the Internet today. More than 500 million people come to Yahoo sites each month, 300 million of them registered users who log on, and they're coming for Yahoo's content and services. Yahoo may not be able to match Google's search engine and accompanying search ad money machine, but YOS ultimately could help improve Yahoo's assets, attract new partners, and bolster the company's advertising revenue." via cnet photo by mag3737

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Navigating Scholarly Content

How Readers Navigate to Scholarly Content by Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner. The research was sponsored by Annual Reviews, PNAS, Meta Press and NPG. (Via Bonnie Lawlor)

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Big Data

Nature has a special issue on "Big Data" which is a must read if you are developing your product road map or looking for technologies companies to invest in.

And for all the skeptics in STM publishing industry who think that semantic web is a fade, it appears that Semantic Web made the top 10 list of technologies that will change our life by 2018 as Google did in the last 10 years.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

First mover advantage in citation process

A new paper by M. E. J Newman from University of Michigan

"Mathematical models of the scientific citation process predict a strong “first-mover” effect under which the first papers in a field will, essentially regardless of content, receive citations at a rate enormously higher than papers published later. Moreover papers are expected to retain this advantage in perpetuity—they should receive more citations indefinitely, no matter how many other papers are published after them. We test this conjecture against data from a selection of fields and in several cases find a first-mover effect of a magnitude similar to that predicted by the theory.
Were we wearing our cynical hat today, we might say that the scientist who wants to become
famous is better off—by a wide margin—writing a modest paper in next year’s hottest field than
an outstanding paper in this year’s. On the other hand, there are some papers, albeit only a small
fraction, that buck the trend and attract significantly more citations than theory predicts despite
having relatively late publication dates. We suggest that papers of this kind, though they often
receive comparatively few citations overall, are probably worthy of our attention" pdf via Michael Nielsen

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Towards a data sharing culture in science

Conclusion from a recent article by Heather A. Piwowar, Michael J. Becich, Howard Bilofsky, Rebecca S. Crowley


"We recognize that there are real and perceived impediments to sharing biomedical research data. Some individual donors may have personal interests in privacy and confidentiality that exceed their desire to contribute to new methods of detecting and treating disease. Investigators may restrict access to data to maximize their professional and economic benefit. Academic health centers may view data sharing as a threat to intellectual property, possibly impeding entrepreneurial spin-offs and technology transfers that bring revenue and act as incubators for future research. AHCs may also worry that the data could be used to critique their health care practices rather than advance the research frontier. Industrial sponsorship can hinder plans for sharing data, and the regulatory environment may necessitate stringent oversight to ensure compliance and minimize risk.

These issues can and must be addressed as we work to embrace a data sharing culture. The hurdles may not be as high as we think: 99% of senior technology transfer officers at highly funded NIH universities agree that academic scientists should freely share data with other academic scientists after publication [41]. The systems and architectures in Table 1 provide a future vision of research in which data are more universally available and interoperable. Recent initiatives for making research publications freely available [42–45] demonstrate a political and academic commitment “to help advance science and improve human health” [46] by widely sharing research results." via SC Blog