Document information
Chemistry Crowdsourcing and Open Notebook Science
Correspondence: (Login to view email address)
- Drexel University
- ChemSpider
- Document Type:
- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 09 January 2008 19:29 UTC; Posted 10 January 2008
- Subjects:
- Cancer, Chemistry, Bioinformatics
- Abstract:
This is a pre-proposal written for the NSF program CDI (Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation) in Jan 2008.
The current system of dissemination of scientific data and knowledge is far less efficient than it needs to be to facilitate improved collaborative science, especially considering current publication vehicles and infrastructure. There is a growing movement promoting more Open Science with the belief that a more transparent scientific process can perform far more effectively. The logical extension of this concept is full transparency – exposing a researcher’s complete record of progress to the public in near real time. Not only will such a process enable ongoing data sharing it also provides an opportunity to develop collaborative communities of scientists and, at the conclusion of data acquisition, can enable communal extraction of conclusions when necessary. We have named this approach Open Notebook Science and have demonstrated its implementation and feasibility with the UsefulChem project, started in the summer of 2005, with the aim of synthesizing novel anti-malarial compounds. Our system currently uses free hosted services using general blog and wiki functions to facilitate replication across any scientific domains. These services are not chemically intelligent and are limited to text and graphic based data sharing only. For Open Notebook Chemistry the ability to intelligently manipulate, manage and search chemical structures and associated data is necessary and we have demonstrated proof of concept capabilities by integrating with the ChemSpider service, a free access online database managing chemical structures and focused on developing a structure centric community for chemists. This work will require the development of a chemically intelligent software platform to extend the capabilities of both the blog and the wiki environment for managing Open Notebook Science. The exposure of raw experimental procedures and data in a semantically rich format will enable the participation of both human and autonomous agents in the process of scientific discovery. This phenomenon of spontaneous group intelligence, referred to as “Crowdsourcing”, has proven valuable in several contexts. Already, productive collaborations have been forged within the UsefulChem project with groups from Indiana University, Nanyang Technological University, the National Cancer Institute and UC San Francisco.
Discussion
- Votes:
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8 votes
- Comments:
-
3 comments
I would be pleased to join. However, this approach completely ignores the current state of (public, meaning state) science funding in most states of the world. In contrast to idealistic view of science from (some of) the insiders, funding of science is taken over by science politicians who need democratic support. And, of course, the more vaguely described the subject is, the broader acceptance it may gain. Chemistry and physics does not fit into the scheme. The transformation of the laboratory notebook into short communication article leads to extreme shortcutting. However, what counts in the CV, and later in the decision of the evaluation committee, is not the content of the notebook, but the number of articles, no matter how short they are. Should that be anyone who will finance my group according to the laboratory notebooks of my Ph.D. students, I will do any effort to collaborate on her/his research projects.
Sincerely
Dalibor Stys
Institute of Physical Biology, Nove Hrady, Czech RepublicDiane – thanks!
Dalibor – yes it is true that this open model is a little different than what is traditional but we’ll keep trying. NSF passed on it so we’ll keep looking. - (Login to share with a colleague)
Additional information
- License:
- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
- How to cite this document:
-
Bradley, Jean-Claude, Owens, Kevin, and Williams, Antony. Chemistry Crowdsourcing and Open Notebook Science. Available from Nature Precedings <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2008.1505.1> (2008)
- Version info:
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Other versions of this document in Nature Precedings
None.
Other versions of this document elsewhere on the web
None known.
Diane Michel on 04 March 2008 22:35 UTC
I believe this to be a very worthwhile endeavor. Thank you for taking the initiative on utilizing collective intelligence for facilitating research science. I especially look forward to your work of facilitating the speed of collaborative sharing of research data with semantic formatting.
Sincerely,
Diane Michel
GlobalMedicalResearch.org