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Science 2.0: the new wave of science

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So by now, we have all heard of Web 2.0, right? In case you haven’t, Wiktionary defines it as “The second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static web pages to dynamic and shareable content and social networking” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Web_2.0 For instance, the tools of Web 2.0 include sites like

 

Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr, and social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit, Delicious and Fark etc. And now, the idea of Science 2.0 has come into being because of the tools of Web 2.0. Science 2.0 can be defined as a second generation of science, where researchers use wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science (see the Scientific American link below).

Science 2.0 Aspects:

  • online collaboration
  • tagging of scientific data to create searchable databases
  • FaceBook-like social networking sites for researchers (can use to find like-minded collaborators)
  • open notebook science – posting your live notebook with raw results on the web

What are the benefits?

Basically, I think Science 2.0 is a great idea! It just seems that science is better and more fun when it is being discussed with a group of people. I don’t know about you, but when I was studying science at school, I always found it to be more rewarding when problems and ideas were discussed with a group of friends. Also, the tools of Web 2.0 will allow for better cross-discipline collaboration and less isolation among smaller labs.

What are some challenges?

After reading various articles on Science 2.0, there seems to be some fear about “getting scooped” (i.e. if you make your ideas readily available on the web, then perhaps someone else could try to get credit for them. Or, someone could build on your ideas and discover something, that you yourself would have found out given just a little more time). There’s also some concern about not receiving formal credit for contributing your ideas to wikis and blogs etc. I understand this fear of getting “scooped”, no one would want the credit for their hard work to go to someone else. At the same time, if someone makes a leaping discovery based on your work, isn’t it only fair that they should at least get some credit? And as for not getting formal credit for contributing to blogs etc. Well, aren’t you in science because you love it? Aren’t you happy to be discussing it with your peers? All this fuss about not receiving credit because you contributed something to a blog post seems a little petty to me. Blogs and wikis are not intended as a replacement for online journals, so you would still have those for your career advancement.

Science 2.0 Examples:

Website Resources:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk https://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/01/08/f-tech-research.html https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/the-internet-is/ https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/uom-mog030608.php

 

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