Transcript Peer Review in the Google Age

UsefulChem:
An Open Notebook Science Project
ASIS&T Panel :
Opening Science to All: Implications of Blogs and Wikis for Social
and Scholarly Scientific Communication
Jean-Claude Bradley
E-Learning Coordinator
College of Arts and Sciences
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Drexel University
Oct 23, 2007
Open and Closed Science
Open Notebook
Science (full
transparency)
Open Access
Journal Article
Traditional
Journal
Article
Traditional
Lab Notebook
(unpublished)
CLOSED
OPEN
Where is Science headed?
WE ARE HERE
How will this happen?
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Self-organizing redundant processes
Agents can Read/Write with zero cost
(free hosted services – e.g. Google)
Publication of all aspects of the scientific
process: Open Notebook Science
How can machines know what is
important?
Ask the humans
UsefulChem Blog
What chemists think is important in
2005
Malaria is a Logical Application of
Open Science
•Very large problem: 300-500 million cases
per year with one million deaths
•Not a lucrative market: IP control less
important
Find-A-Drug
Diketopiperazine Library
First iteration: Solid
Support Synthesis
Evolves to: on pot Ugi
reaction/cyclization
The Molecules Blog
The Experiments Blog
Comments from peers
The UsefulChem Wiki
Telling the story of the failures
Experiments moved to wiki
Experiment History
Experiment Edits
Third Party Time-Stamp on
Experiment Versions
Monitoring experimental progress
How are people finding our
experiments?
Molecules found by InChI
Graphical Mining of Data with
JSpecView
usefulchem.wikispaces.com/Exp070 (48h 7 min)
The blog as an integrative tool
usefulchem.blogspot.com
Processing Molecules on ChemSpider
Open Primary Research in Drug Design
using Web2.0 tools
(blogs, wikis, Second Life, mailing lists)
Rajarshi Guha
Indiana U
JC Bradley
Drexel U
Phil Rosenthal
UCSF
(malaria)
Docking
Tsu-Soo Tan
Nanyang Inst.
Synthesis
Testing
Dan Zaharevitz
NCI
(tumors)
Mailing List Facilitates inter-group
collaboration
UsefulChem and Open Science in
Second Life
scifooliveson.wikispaces.com
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Question: Is it really a good thing to let anyone who thinks they
have a scientific breakthrough have access to free, open, public,
Googleable media?
YES
Question: What if I make a mistake in my data, never fix it, no one
catches it, and then someone dies because a medical decision was
based on my "findings"? Isn't this exactly why we have formal peer
review in formal publications?
Peer review is not designed to catch errors from the
analysis of raw data
Open Notebook Science is more difficult where human
subjects are involved
Question: Who is the audience for science blogs and wikis anyway?
Scientists or laypeople?
For UsefulChem, wiki is for chemists, blog for wider
audience
Question: Can you get published if you've already posted your
results to your blog/wiki?
We’ll find out….
Question: Can scientists establish their credibilities/reputation by
writing blogs and wikis?
Certainly we’ve found collaborators this way