Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Launches Initiative To Adapt Scientific Practice To the Open Web
An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla announced the Mozilla Science Lab, a project to help modernize scientific practices to make better use of the open web. "Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn't transformed scientific practice to the same extent we've seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the "analog" age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around "papers," for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible.' Hopefully this can be another step in moving away from traditional publishing practices, and encourage a new generation of scientists to make their data available in more useful ways."
Is Mozilla going to employ them after they fail to obtain tenure because they didn't publish?
"...science is still largely rooted in the "analog" age..."
When people post inane statements like this, you have to wonder about the state of the educational system...
A little three person project?!
I'll wait until someone with real money decides to properly fund something.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Researchers are discouraged... from learning? What the hell?
This is the best one to publish under, also because AFL is my favourite footy code.
Mozilla's been doing quite a bit of following in the past few years. Nice to see them take on something new and potentially significant. I don't know if they're the right folks for the job (they certainly have the cache') or if they'll succeed, but it's a good way for the Foundation to think that doesn't merely involve mimicking what Google does.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
One thing that would be great would be to fund studies that's sole purpose is to verify/reproduce someone else's work. Obviously, with the current state of funding, this really doesn't happen. Once something is published, we as the next researchers are forced to take results as fact - which may not be true due to error, low yield, or (hopefully not) fabrication of results (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct).
I really do believe that incentivizing verification of results and repeat studies (with reasonable limits, of course) would improve scientific research tremendously. However, it's even less likely to take hold than moving away from "publish or perish."
It is obnoxious that someone can publish their results without providing the code & data available for independent verification.
When are we going to return to the _proper_ scientific process & analysis?
How does Mozilla even have a plan to change this broken symptom of "everything behind a paywall" ?
A decentralized peer-to-peer content distribution and review system (torrent). Seeding is endorsement of the content.
List publications endorsed (seeded) by researchers you trust.
Download a publication, read it.
If it passes your scrutiny, you seed it too.
As is, I would say scientists do leverage quite a bit of practices as exemplified by the open web, just it might not be as open to the public.
The last three labs I worked in shared work with a wiki system internally. Friends I know in collaborations more than a couple people also have similar setups. They are usually not open to the public, but access on some of them are granted to people who ask or at least people on similar projects. Usually the hesitation to open it up comes about because the write ups there are quite menial and/or rough, and in one case because of some red tape from the university about what type of documents could be shared with the public. I know there are documents on our current wiki would rather not have to answer questions about from people misreading it, and would much rather answer questions directly if they had any. E.g. I wouldn't want someone to try to figure out what voltage and current settings we use for a piece of equipment from the document on the wiki when people on the team know the dial is off by quite a bit, but if they asked me I would give them the actual values that such things would correspond to.
I'm not saying there isn't more need for such tech and opportunities to improve access and use. A lot of groups have to make do with what is already available as opposed developing something for their specific needs. This limits them to more general tech non-science software creators made or more specific tech that only exists because a larger research group somewhere else actually had the time and personnel to dedicate to developing the software. The more such software that is out there and the more well developed it is, the more likely it will meet the needs of a group that can't develop their own stuff.
But I think it isn't appropriate to say science needs to be modernized by introducing such web tools, as many of them are already there and making a big difference. They could use even more such tools though, and there are steps that could be taken to make sure the tools are more visible. Although, ultimate, especially if the goal is to share data and work outside collaborations and people willing to ask for stuff, the amount of sharing won't be limited by the tools, but by the amount of time the scientists will put into it instead of doing more direct work.
I for one can't wait for academic credentials to be judged based on .... #cough# ... blogs.
I see from the "Recent changes" page on the Wiki that spammers are straight onto this...
"Scientists created the web"
No—_engineers_ created the web.