Sigma BioBlogs

We know that today’s social communications tools are used by some scientists, and it’s a slowly growing minority.  What if the majority of scientists embraced social networking?  For those that use it, it’s a lifeline to other scientists and information resources…so it stands to reason that more scientists would benefit from social networking tools.

During the Saturday session at Science Online 2011, Brian Krueger, Dr. Isis, and I led a discussion that covered a broad range of topics relating to the way that scientists communicate and collaborate.  I’d like to focus in on the portion where we discussed ways to make social networking simpler for scientists who are interested, but overwhelmed.

What are the “social objects” scientists can gather around online?  Social objects are common traits, experiences, and other conversation topics that bring two or more people together.

From our session, 3 comments really pointed to potential social objects for me:

1. Brian pointed out in his blog about the session, “The social objects in science really are ideas, data, and papers.  We could probably socialize things like questions or techniques too.”
2. Becca Weinberg noted that skill building is most important for her at this time in her career, as she’s working on her thesis.
3. Dr. Isis pointed out that scientists running research projects and labs need access to the most recent information about funding sources

Making social netoworking more accessible

I plan to develop a series of blogs that will address ways to make online communications tools more accessible by connecting the needs expressed above by Brian, Becca, and Dr. Isis.  AFter soliciting input from the Science Online community, I plan to start to create some simple “how to’s” for scientists who are interested in better tools, but are overwhelmed by social networking sites.

Here is my starter list of topics:

• Online scientists speak!  How social networking tools have helped my research
• Utilizing Twitter: Follow funding resources, online science publications, and interact with the online science community.
• RSS Feeds and Readers.  How to create a reader, and a starter list of basic scientific resources to fill it out.
• Following science on Facebook.
• Mendeley, Citeulike, Endnote, and Zotero all provide a way to collect and share citations, and papers.
• Online Tools for building your lab skills: What resources exist that will expand your skill set?  Benchfly.com, Bitesizebio.com, JOVE – Journal of Visualized Experiments are available for starters.
• Quora.com – Sharing scientific questions with each other, and answering them for the non-science community as well.

What else would help? Do you have additional tricks of the trade you are willing to share?

In closing, I  want to say (although it’s been said…many times, many ways) Science Online 2011 was the most amazing meeting I’ve ever attended.  I look forward to keeping in touch via the twitter tag #scio11 and over the phone with my new friends throughout the year, and am looking forward to the projects that will come from my time with everyone in RTP, North Carolina.

I’ve been reading about “Collaboratories” in preparation for my session to discuss online collaboration across Industry and Academia at Science Online 2011 to discuss existing methods of online collaboration and ways to improve them.

A great project for discussion is the “Science of Collaboratories” or SOC project.  In the earlier half of this decade the NSF sponsored the SOC to determine the best ways to successfully collaborate globally.

The SOC published a book called “Scientific Collaboration on the Internet” in 2008 detailing different types of collaboratories, the ways in which they are successful, and areas for improvement.

Some basic markers for a successful collaboratory that Bos et. al determined:

• How the work is coupled is very important: the more easily partitionable the work, the more likely it can be conducted long distance. Working through technology is not good for work that is tightly coupled or highly ambiguous.
• People have to have common understandings of what they are doing, what is called “common ground,” both about the nature of the work and how and when they will communicate.
• The technical infrastructure has to be sophisticated enough to accommodate the new technology. The more uniform the infrastructure, the better.
• The community supported has to have a spirit of collaboration for the collaboratory to be successful. You cannot make people collaborate by implementing collaboration technology.
• Incentives for participation must be carefully designed to encourage sustained participation in some types of collaboratories.

What do you think?  Do you have a successful collaboration?  How does it fit with the markers described?

As someone who tests online tools w/ scientists, the phrase , “You cannot make people collaborate by implementing collaboration technology” is most important. The technology is simply a tool, and is only as effective as the user’s motivation to use it.  The tools that were successful were always designed from the viewpoint of a user’s need and ability to use it as a part of his or her work.

To give you a little more of a taste of the book,  below are two examples of successful collaboratories.

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories — EMSL is funded by the Department of Energy, and was built to be a user facility (for NMR, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that is “just down the hall” from any researcher in the USA.

Biomedical Informatics Research Network – BIRN, — BIRN supports primarily neuro researchers, and has been highly successful in setting up sub-collaborative efforts in each individual area.

I am gearing up for my first Science Online conference!  A little nervous, but really excited to meet all the Scientwists and bloggers I’ve been reading  for so long.

I’m planning a session to explore existing methods of online collaboration across the science industry.  I want to explore ways to improve them, and ways to make them more accessible to less Internet-saavy scientists.

This is me asking for your support for Science Online 2011

These are the questions I’m thinking about…What do you think?  Do you have other questions?  Do you already know the answers?

• How are you already using social media for collaboration?
• What works the best? What could work better?
• How are you meeting and addressing confidentiality needs?
• Are you unable to use sharing software for confidentiality reasons?  Why?
• What else should we think about?

For examples of successful collaboration online, see follow-up post “Is your science in a “collaboratory“?”

As I was composing this blog, this Bill Murray sketch from the beginning of his SNL career kept coming to mind.  He addressed the audience to say…“I’m just asking for your support.”