... A central facility like the ISIS Pulsed Neutron Source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK needs to support its community. By making our work public we are helping the researchers who use our facility. In the ISIS Biomolecular Sciences group, we aim to make our research records and the data available on the web as soon as possible. The open notebook approach is not currently a standard ISIS policy for data access but our group is exploring the approaches that could work at a large research centre like ISIS. Our aim is simply to make more of this information available to those who want and need it.
At ISIS we are using the open notebook science approach to study the structure and function of a class of proteins found in biological membranes. ...
Biology experiments like this involve considerable trial and error and generate large volumes of data. In most projects much of this data is discarded, and methods are often not described in detail, although these may be useful for other research. By capturing and recording our data and placing it in the public domain, we provide a foundation that can save other scientists valuable time and money. ...
In addition, when people know that their work is going to be readily available for others to view, they’re likely to be more precise in their note taking. At the core of doing good science, is making a high-quality record of that research.
We try to provide detailed methodology online, in papers or in other online services that are linked back to specific examples in our lab notebooks. ...
p>The web makes it possible to share more with a wider audience. We need improved tools to do this, and many groups are working on building those. Currently, sharing requires an active choice and additional work. I believe that, in the future, when the tools mature, sharing will be a question of pressing a button. Researchers may choose to press that button when the results are formally published or as soon as the experiment is done. My belief is that the benefits of sharing immediately will encourage more (but by no means all) people to share all their work as it is recorded. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 5/05/2009 04:38:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
