Some things are just so smegging cool they don’t need an explanation.
First, there’s this awesome live Tube map. Where trains are in real time, which is on a level of coolness as realizing that Tube Deluxe can tell you when trains are due at stations (which is great if you’re above ground…).
But then there’s this:
Compare that with this:
As Steffany put it,
Rapid transit system porn!!!
I gave a talk last night at the Royal College of Physicians, in the Research Information Network‘s series on Research in transition. The inestimable (and believe me, I’ve tried estimating him) Stephen Curry was there too; it was a veritable surfeit of ginger ninjas. The subject was quality assurance in the literature, and how we might perform QA in the web 2.0 world. I tackled the subject of motivation—how we might persuade busy researchers to get involved in post-publication literature assessment. Theo Bloom and Tristram Hooley were also there, talking about PLoS and using networks, respectively. Stephen tackled the whole problem from a user point of view.
Stephen had slides, and nobody else did. Therefore I can’t post any slides, but here’s the notes I spoke from. It should be noted that this is by no means a transcript.
Academic publishing—by which I mean publishing of research results and papers—is a strange beast.
It must be the only industry where the producers of the content actually pay for people to use, or access, their product. In a way, it’s a little like advertising, but in advertising you spend money in the hope that you will get more back when people buy your product.
A research author, on the other hand, spends money on research, spends money on getting the results of that research published, and has to pay again to access the research of others.
And most of us think this is normal.
I’m quite aware this could turn into a rant against the publishing industry, but I don’t want to go there. I’m more interested in this attitude of most researchers—what motivates them— and what that means for this kind of post-publication peer review kind of thing.
There is quite a post-publication commenting community already. Some of this is reasonably formalized—such as on researchblogging.org, or even the basis of a business model—Faculty of 1000, obviously. And as we’ve seen with the arsenic story (I’m assuming you all know about Rosie Redfield’s blog by now), there’s a huge informal network willing to make informed comment, often in great depth, using any kind of media available.
But these raises a couple of questions for us. The first, as a consumer of this kind of discussion, is “How do I trust this person, this comment?” Is it informed? The Arsenic life story is a case in point—why should I trust Rosie’s analysis, for example? I’m not going to talk any more about matters of trust, because I believe Tristram is going to address that.
No, I’m concentrating on the second question, the one I’ve just mentioned, which, from a producer’s point of view, is “Why should I comment?” Or if you like, “What is my motivation?”
I started off talking about money because it’s quite obvious that people don’t do this for money, and actually I don’t think there’s much expectation from bloggers and our Faculty members that they should get paid.
Yes, I’d quite like to be able to pay our Faculty Members, but if we’re not going to insult them we’d have to make it a decent sum, at least fifty quid per evaluation say—and we have 10,000 members, producing (at the moment) up to 1500 evaluations each month. You do the maths: that business model is not sustainable. Yes, we give away sweatshirts and mugs and laser pointers and whatnot to Faculty Members, but they’re thank-you presents, they’re never pitched as payment (because it would be insulting to imply they were).
Even in those blog networks that pay non-staffed writers—Science blogs dot com, the Guardian, I think that’s it—I’m not convinced that the money is why these people do it. Outside of the current day job I’ve certainly never received money for writing about other people’s science.
I guess it’s formally possible that people do it for fun. Here’s a selection of quotes that I found on Cesar Sanchez’s blog, from peer reviewers:
More seriously, I think that some people well gladly criticize published papers because there is something wrong with the science, and they feel a need to bring this into the open. I’m assuming that’s what was behind Rosie Redfield’s analysis of the arsenic paper. The other side of that coin is probably a desire to bring good research to a wider audience—but these I think are personal motivations that can’t address, more generally, the question “how are you going to try and motivate people to write about published research in a reasonable, critical, even-handed way?”
We can’t rely on benevolent disinterest.
We are looking for form of quid pro quo, essentially. It’s something we at F1000 have been thinking about for some time. What we’ve found is that it comes down to reputation, and “impact credits” if I might coin a phrase. Scientists are busy trying to do research, with the ultimate aim of publishing, I am loathe to admit, in a “high impact” journal, so that they can get the next grant, so that they can do research, with the ultimate aim of publishing in a high impact—you get the picture.
Anything that takes away from this has to be weighed carefully. And for many, perhaps most people, it’s just not worth it. Maybe thinking about the problems in terms of effort to reward ratio would be useful, and perhaps we can talk about that later. Especially in respect of the more senior people who would give credibility to any exercise of this sort.
At F1000 we worked very hard to recruit a critical mass of senior researchers—scientists and clinicians—who lend the exercise legitimacy. A lot of our day-to-day effort is spent in talking to these people, recruiting more, and of course getting them to write evaluations. Because of who we chose to make recruiting decisions—essentially already respected members of the scientific community—there is the cachet of being recognized by your peer group, simply on the basis of being a member of Faculty of 1000.
So getting people signed up is relatively easy, most people are honoured by it, and the authors of evaluated papers I talk to are very pleased to get into F1000. Some institutions will even take F1000-evaluated articles into account when recruiting. Which is very gratifying for us, but getting to people to actually write is a tad more difficult.
What we’re hearing, more and more, is that this very question of impact credits is what motivates people. We’re looking at getting our evaluations indexed, we want them to be citable—especially the longer ones that actually contextualize the science. I think when authors are comfortable putting F1000 evaluations, maybe even putting blog posts and friendfeed threads, in their publication records, then we might be on to something.
That’s what they care about.
Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
My problem is, I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut. I’ll say things that other people dare only think, and it makes me unpopular. My friends—I really feel for them, actually—probably view me as a grenade that could go off at any moment.
But the thing about that is occasionally you need someone to say those things; to stand up and be counted; to make a difference. I think it’s part of the same personality trait. I was the first to support Jenny when she made her call-to-arms to save science funding, and I pushed hard behind the scenes to make it happen. I became the focus for the grumblings at Nature Network, setting up first a Facebook group to discuss what we might do, and when my patience finally snapped I built this website. Along the way I’ve made myself unpopular with some people.
Collateral damage, I guess. You do things, you push against the status quo; you actually get off your arse and do something about it—not everybody is going to continue liking you.
The fracas with leaving Nature Network ultimately wasn’t my fault—but I wouldn’t keep quiet about it, which definitely was. I don’t regret that—the things I said needed saying, and the record needed putting right. This is a shame, really. I didn’t get chance to say farewell to Nature Network properly.
I have a lot to thank that place for. It helped me develop as a writer, got me exposure, and even led to a job just when I needed it most. I wanted to thank Matt Brown for his hard work, and Li Kim Lee for martinis and recruiting me in the first place. To acknowledge the people who literally changed my life. And it would have been nice to say so there, to give credit in the place where credit was due. As it is there is bad feeling and smoke in my eyes.
Enough. That’s behind us now. What is, is.
Look, over there:
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
—Arthur Hugh Clough
T minus one day… We’re putting the fun in fungible!
The tang in tangible!
And the mental in fundamental!
Here’s some comments from our users…
I’m excited about blogging again
I could crush a grape
Of course I jumped at the chance to join my friends, excellent writers all, in this exciting new venture!
Less yo, more ‘cress
I’m excited! Are you excited? I’m excited!
a general tone of low level grousing
Stay tuned: full details tomorrow!
Just after I got to work this morning, a parcel appeared on my desk. “I wonder what that could be?” I said, theatrically.
Ah ha! Look at that handsome photography.
The Honest Look, now shipping from Amazon.
PS Don’t forget to put this Friday in your diaries. Everything changes.
It’s just not cool to simply photograph the Google Street View car any more. And finding yourself on Street View is just so passé.
The trick now is to photograph the Street View car and match it up with the photo it takes of you.
You may remember that last summer I was strolling along Cleveland Street in search of some lunch, when the fabled Google Street car passed me, and looped the block. Indeed, I offered a drink to the first person to spot me.
It looks like I might have to buy myself that drink. Here’s a photo I took:
and here is me, about three seconds after taking it:
Check out Google itself for the full picture. If you look to the right you’ll see that chap in the white shirt has passed the pale concrete slab, and on the left those two pigeons have taken off in the time between my shot, and the Street View.
Hah. Gotcha, Google.
While cooking dinner, I was pondering a twitter conversation, and some news reports that had been referenced. With my vast expanse of science journalism (hah) on the one hand, and personal insight into major newsworthy events on the other, I realized there was a universal law waiting to be articulated.
Here, then, is Grant’s First Law of Journalism:
All news articles contain at best one error, and probably more than one untruth.
If this is true, then whenever you read, hear or watch a news report, you must know that it is somehow fundamentally flawed if not not outright wrong. And if you can’t find anything obviously wrong, you’re not looking hard enough.
Discuss.
We’re doomed, aren’t we?
Herbal remedies are to be held to the same standards as other medicine.
Naturally, the loonies are up in arms about this, possibly because paying for testing will eat into their profits. Their comments are at the same time very funny (especially when people with a synapse to call their own take them to task) and depressing.
Have a look, and if you can bear to, have a giggle too.
Buy me a coffee: 
