Science Commons, Open Access … and affiliate marketing!!!
February 29, 2008
In association with SPARC and ARL, the good folk at Science Commons have released (under a CC-BY-NC license) a whitepaper to help scientists comply with the NIH mandate to archive their work on PubMed Central. The white paper is a good read for any scientist doing any publishing, especially the section on compliance options (Section IV).
In related news, Richard Poynder interviews John Wilbanks of Science Commons (the interview is made available as a PDF file under a CC license). In the blog post, Richard talks about John’s vision for the internet and open science
In addition, Wilbanks believes the Internet should be viewed as a platform for facilitating the free circulation and sharing of the physical tools of science — cell lines, antibodies, plasmids etc. In a sense, he wants to see these tools embedded into research papers — so if a reader of an Open Access paper wants more detailed information on, say, a cell line, they should be able to click on a link and pull up information from a remote database. Should the researcher then want to obtain that cell line from a biobank, they should be able to order it in the same way as they might order an item on Amazon or eBay, utilising a 1-click system available directly from the article.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s exactly the kind of thing I was imagining when I blogged about Assay Depot. It is also one way to monetize the open science web. I doubt John is saying that assays, equipment, etc accessed from an open science paper should be available for free. Given a semantic web of scientific information, or some form of semantic markup, which allows people to perform the kinds of actions described by John, one could think about publishers setting up affiliate relationships with vendors, perhaps coming up with one way of funding open access journals. Of course, everything will have to be on the up and up (in other words, full transparency and no special treatment for papers with affiliate vendor equipment used).
Technorati Tags: Science Commons, Open Access
Wikipedia, the missing manual
February 29, 2008
Recently, I got a chance to get my hands on Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. I had never read one of the O’Reilly Missing Manuals series before, and this is not likely to be the last one, especially if the rest of the series is anything like the Wikipedia book. By the end of the first chapter, I knew a lot more about Wikipedia then I did earlier, and best of all, it made me want to go in and start doing research so I could contribute to one of the most important developments.
Over the past few years, I have become mostly uninterested in books that teach you how to use a web resource or a software app. For good reason; most do a really lousy job. Not so in this case. Even someone like Nicholson Baker recommends using the missing manual to learn how to be more effective using Wikipedia, especially as a contributor. The strange thing is, scientists probably make among the better Wikipedia contributors for a reason. We are used to providing attribution (although we could be better at making it sound less opinionated).
I am not done reading the book, so more after I get through more of it (it’s not thin). You know what would be great; an accompanying website with screencasts. That would make things really cool.
Technorati Tags: Missing Manuals, O’Reilly Media, Wikipedia
Ligand docking memories
February 29, 2008
While I was at Accelrys one of the things that I tried to push was an increased use of force fields, MD and more physical approaches for molecular recognition problems like ligand docking. It’s always good to see some of those thoughts and early proofs-of-concept become reality
Technorati Tags: CHARMM, Ligand Docking, Flexible Docking
Your personal health: Trusera ready for lift off
February 28, 2008
Trusera, a Seattle-based social health site is getting ready to come out of closed beta. The site will move to an Open Beta next Tuesday at the Health 2.0 conference. That should give the site an influx of users which will make the offering, centered around people sharing their health related experiences and anecdotes that much more useful as network effects come into play.
Credibility and authorship is a big deal in the health space. Trusera seems to have made significant efforts in this area. According to Keith Schorsch, CEO of Trusera, you’ll know the member name, profile information, and reputation behind each piece of content. Each member then will have the option to share their real name. Anonymous content is not allowed on the site and your own network is “invitation only.”
The company is also looking to build a targeted content base by reaching out to personal health activists, with an initial focus on autism and breast cancer. So it appears that the end goal of the service is to have a mix of expert content and individual anecdotes.
If all goes well, the open Trusera.com should be live some time tomorrow with the formal announcement next week.
One can’t help but compare Trusera to iMedix, another site I have reviewed here before, but in my mind the two are different. iMedix is a search engine with social features, while with Trusera, the social part is front and center.
Further reading
Trusera launches invitation-only beta
Technorati Tags: Trusera, Social Networking, Health 2.0
Why should you get a free 23andme test?
February 28, 2008
Loic LeMeur posed the question on Seesmic as part of a giveaway for one 23andme genotyping test. I happened to be on at the time and looks like I made the 12 finalists. After watching all 12, there is little chance that I’ll make the cut. But you never know 
Technorati Tags: 23andme, Seesmic, Loic Le Meur
