The INFO Project Blog

At the 2008 Science Blogging conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Dr. Hemai Parthasarathy is leading a discussion of the flawed but enormously exciting concept-in-practice that is Open Science.

Four laptops in a row are open in my row–facts being checked, backgrounds googled–and Hemai’s presentation is becoming a conversation. Participants add lessons learned (in italics).

Hemai: This is my first “un-conference”. I’m a scientist. Used to talking to scientists. Studied neuroscience at MIT.

As student there was concern students browsing PubMed, MedLine wouldn’t read before 1986. Copies of research articles were FedExed. Faxing decision letters was ‘radical’. Left Nature (a journal started in 1865) to join Public Library of Sciences (PLoS) as founding editor. PLoS exists because of the web. Advocacy group of scientists said subscription model publishing doesn’t make sense. Answer overwhelmingly was no it doesn’t. Pay for added value costs up front allow anyone to access. Asking is business model sustainable? Missing point that web has transformed basic communication. No one knew how much to charge. Advantages: to poor institutions, freelancers (she is one, left PLoS few months ago). “Creative Commons attribution licenses” can do anything with literature with proper attribution. Opened up rethinking.

There is waste in peer review system. People aim very high. Try journal ranked 5 before paper is published. Paper hasn’t changed. Question of evaluation and effort going into outcome (valuable data, interesting, not right for our journal. Don’t think it’s for our readership). Into into peer review lost. If one can de-emphasize where a paper is published and de-emphasize up front filtering that goes in not on basis of rigor but perceived quality you could end up with much better system.

Question: do you lose value?

Optimal balance of filtering science.

How can Web 2.0 change the way… Let’s separate evaluating rigor from evaluating importance. Get it out there. Let community do filtering that nature and science editors do. My question is will you get a better outcome?

1. Incentive structures aren’t set up. What is value to scientists already overworked … to them to interact with literature to make it more valuable.

2. Is there a critical mass of expertise? Or is it true that there are the best 3 people I need to pick to evaluate? Paper is not be all end all. We want to rewrite paper 10 years later as Bora has talked about.

Question: Are you trying to improve science, or publishing?

I think we’re trying to improve science.

All of that input from referees (peer review) is lost.

“Cell press model” and “Nature model” at Cell press you would submit paper to Cell band editors say we will publish it in another publication. At Nature, they agree to send reviews along to sister journal.

Neuroscience Initiative. Society for Neuroscience is putting together deal to pass positive reviews to each other.
Why would you not want to pass along reviews?

You’re saying here, take the work I’ve done, have it. Nobody has paid for it. It’s expensive. We looked at paying reviewers for their time and it would have been very expensive.

A lot of times reviewers have a political issue. What value are those flawed reviews?
Reason for Nature model. Unless I know who’s written the review it’s that trust issue.

Has anybody published in a wiki?

I’m not aware of. PLoS One has posted anonymous reviews. A Chemistry journal has done that.

You’re not limited anymore to 10 [articles] per month. What is the volume for Nature in 2035? What’s limiting it now at Nature is page charges. 200 articles, is it still Nature? No cache.

Today you can drop it into eprint repository you’re no longer doomed to obscurity if you can convince a small group of referees to publish.

Most journals put paper articles online.

Who determines quality? Is it a democratic process? Or do you trust Nature’s selection process?

Sophisticated reuse model would blow this up.
My field is evolution. There are crackpots out there. The idea of having it out there, politicians don’t care about the content of the paper. They’ll say, This has been published by Charles in Kansas.
Does the culture change? I’ve heard people won’t publish in PLoS because they fear crackpots will. In Web 2.0 those people get filtered out because.
Carol Menaker, Myelin Repair: We started out calling our foundation a collaborative but everybody calls theirs that. MS focused. Share information in real time they perceive their rate of discovery has been much faster. Number of papers published jointly has increased. 14 targets identified ahead of schedule. Process has accelerated enormously.

Patent issue big concern for Open Science.
We’re not interested in intellectual property (Jean-Claude Bradley, wearing Mountain View t-shirt).

Virtual pharma collaborative emerging are people going to find a way to bring these drugs to market. Drexel University: Making anti-malarial compounds out in the open is it going to be usable in the third world before going through a patent process?

[”Pharma” person raises his hand in front row.]

Microcosm of people sharing information not in general mass.

We created a blog aggregator [participant from Belgrave, Serbia, working on HIV]
I worry that you don’t browse anymore.
My boss catches me doing that he’ll skin me. (Bill Hooker, Open Reading Frame, next to mt. view t-shirt)

But what sources do I trust?

The volume of information…
What about the embargo?

I tried at PLoS Biology to get rid of the embargo. For PLoS it makes a certain amount of sense. If you’re going to have masses hear about paper wouldn’t it be great to have the source. Because of short attention spans you want attention when facts are available. Human Genome Project got huge publicity, Bill Clinton shaking hands with people well before papers published. Half-page articles.

Philosophically, I don’t think there should be embargoes. It’s used to avert criticism. Comes down to a principle of trueness. If it’s published in a peer reviewed journal it must be true.

[Later]

Browsing has changed. I look at last 24 hours of ScienceBlogs. Serendipity has changed. Pushing vendors to innovate. Illustrata, new CSA product. Takes several hundred journals and indexes those. Furiously trying to figure out what’s worth paying for.

What do we do about China?

Esperanto. [laughs]

Are we replicating science in three different languages?

Yeah, science has a dominant language, it was German, now it’s English. they are going to be segregated. Chinese are getting pressure to publish in English journals.
Can I do a quick and dirty experiment? How many would rather publish in PLoS or Open Source journals. [Smattering of hands raised] Perception that it’s a sought out application–it’s turning around.

Friends ask me, don’t you have to pay to publish in Open Access? [Benefit not seen]

Everybody is an “open-access” journal now.

Not to be a Pollyanna… Adaptive Evolution in Humans paper. I was struck that I could get to it for free. I started PhD in 1990 you couldn’t do that. Bloggers discussion–I was struck by how quickly science has changed. Suddenly.

Researchers now, used to sharing online. Put it up in a YouTube video. Used to having no restrictions on mash-ups. Boon for Open Science. New generation expects to do this.
Andrew, scienceprogress.org

New NHI mandate to archive. How could the federal government mandate follow these paths towards open access publishing? Still a 12-month window before open access.

Scientists are conservative by nature. They will get used to open access.

Now that we have the NIH mandate out there–we’ll see the steam roll, this is just the start. It’s going to trickle into security, education.

NIH says upon acceptance for publication, not publication–put in PubMed Central.