2collab, a service from Elsevier, which I received a demo of earlier this week, went live today, adding another player to the scientific social networking space. Richard Akerman has an excellent review over on his blog. As he notes, at this point of time 2collab can be compared to social bookmarking services like Connotea and CiteULike with Scintilla-like user ratings, but Elsevier seems to have larger plans for the service. While they don’t quite say which direction they will go, it is clear that their idea of “collaboration” goes beyond sharing bookmarks. Already the service has some fairly nifty features to set up public or private groups that could be developed around a specific collaboration, but given existing properties like ScienceDirect and Scopus, Elsevier is sitting on some excellent information resources which, combined with all the features for bibliography import embedded in 2collab, could form the basis for a collaboration space. In other words people could tee off collaborations based on a shared space in 2collab and continue to collaborate there. This could even be extended into a value-added paid service in the future if, e.g. you want to start storing information (images, etc) there. I am thinking Backpack-like functionality around a collaboration space of shared information resources like publications.
One thing that might be on Elsevier’s mind is competition with Nature, which has done an absolutely wonderful job of leveraging web 2.0 paradigms into science via properties like Scintilla and Nature Network. I don’t quite think Elsevier has the web 2.0 ethos down quite like the Nature folk do, but they do understand scientific research, which is why I hope they stay away from social networking and the information connectivities that Nature enables and focus on more formal collaborative relationships.
I have long been critical of Elsevier for throwing up pay walls around it’s publications. 2collab is free and open. It comes with an API, both excellent moves. Just imagine if the company would lower some more walls; the power of services like 2collab would only be amplified. In a closed environment, social bookmarking and collaborative research only go so far, and then you start banging into walls. Public/Private groups and collaborative spaces around open information are the way to go IMO. Let’s see how this falls out.
In a nutshell, 2collab is a good, well thought out and designed service in a field that’s getting a little crowded for a relatively small userbase (no Digg like traffic numbers here). I consider Elsevier to be competing with Nature, but I believe they should have a different focus to be successful (I don’t plan to leave Nature Network anytime soon). However, without opening up more of their properties, they are limiting the long term success of a very good product. I’ll be following the evolution of 2collab closely.
I had a quick look around but nothing grabbed my attention. The groups idea is nice but I prefer JournalFire or Scintilla. They could consider importing tagged data from Connotea and Citeulike to bootstrap it. I wonder if they can do this.
In the current form, I completely agree with you. Other than the groups and, from what I heard, a nice simple API, there is nothing compelling to making me switch from Connotea I did like the somewhat sparse design). That said, I got a feeling that this is only a start.
If I recall you can import from Connotea and CiteULike, but I don't think the tags come through (worth a try)
Yes, just to let you know, we are looking at the tagging aspects of our importing and exporting from other app's. Unfortunately, we are trying to decipher how other sites have set up their information - but we're trying! Setting standards for social app's (so Open Social if it is versatile enough) has obvious benefits and really would help lower the walls around the different app's that researchers use.
I tried importing a Zotero export and all the tags were stripped. I didn't try importing from Connotea because there was no way to delete the lot and start over using the same profile.
The Scopus intergration is nice, but I couldn't find any of my papers in Scopus, and my library doesn't subscribe to Scopus(subscribes to WoS), so as nice as the automatic forward links are, I don't guess I'll be using it.
Science continues to get more social
One thing that might be on Elsevier’s mind is competition with Nature, which has done an absolutely wonderful job of leveraging web 2.0 paradigms into science via properties like Scintilla and Nature Network. I don’t quite think Elsevier has the web 2.0 ethos down quite like the Nature folk do, but they do understand scientific research, which is why I hope they stay away from social networking and the information connectivities that Nature enables and focus on more formal collaborative relationships.
I have long been critical of Elsevier for throwing up pay walls around it’s publications. 2collab is free and open. It comes with an API, both excellent moves. Just imagine if the company would lower some more walls; the power of services like 2collab would only be amplified. In a closed environment, social bookmarking and collaborative research only go so far, and then you start banging into walls. Public/Private groups and collaborative spaces around open information are the way to go IMO. Let’s see how this falls out.
In a nutshell, 2collab is a good, well thought out and designed service in a field that’s getting a little crowded for a relatively small userbase (no Digg like traffic numbers here). I consider Elsevier to be competing with Nature, but I believe they should have a different focus to be successful (I don’t plan to leave Nature Network anytime soon). However, without opening up more of their properties, they are limiting the long term success of a very good product. I’ll be following the evolution of 2collab closely.
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