{"id":987,"date":"2012-02-16T10:12:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T10:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/?p=987"},"modified":"2012-02-16T14:34:03","modified_gmt":"2012-02-16T14:34:03","slug":"facebook-for-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2012\/02\/16\/facebook-for-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"“Facebook for scientists”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soon after Nature Network launched in 2007 it was being touted as the “Facebook for scientists”. Other sites that had been around longer, such as FriendFeed <\/a>and LabSpaces<\/a>, occasionally got that moniker too (and indeed Facebook bought\u00a0out FriendFeed later on).\u00a0 I view any use of the phrase “Facebook for scientists” with great suspicion.\u00a0 At least Mendeley (the social and bibliographic management site) has the imagination to call themselves\u00a0the Last.FM for science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brian Krueger, at LabSpaces,\u00a0suggested\u00a0<\/a>why none of these sites have become dominant in the way that FaceBook has:<\/p>\n

ResearchGate\u2019s groups and Job listings appear to be relatively active, Nature Network has its blogs and forum, and LabSpaces has the news and Blogs. However it seems like, at least for LabSpaces, I’ve just catered to the scientists who were willing to interact on-line…<\/p>\n

The attraction of scientists to a network is not going to be the network itself, that\u2019s apparent, so it\u2019s going to come down to developing a network around tools that help make a scientist\u2019s life easier. The \u201cproblem\u201d for developers is that the number of tools that overlap between fields and disciplines is too small for any network to really dominate the science social network landscape which could limit large scale investment in social network based free tools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Daniel Mietchen\u00a0agreed with this diagnosis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a small, dedicated group advocating for open science and social networks. \u00a0Despite this fact, the latter have been \u201cbreeding like rabbits,\u201d as\u00a0Cameron Neylon noted in this 2008 post<\/a>.\u00a0 At that time he counted about a dozen contenders for the title of \u201cfacebook for scientists\u201d (including,\u00a0Laboratree<\/a>,Research Gate<\/a>,\u00a0Epernicus<\/a>,LabMeeting<\/a>,\u00a0Graduate Junction<\/a>,Nature Network<\/a>).\u00a0 But none of them, not even Nature Network, have been able to dominate the field in the manner of a Facebook.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, they still cater to a minority of scientists; to those who enjoy that kind of online interaction for its own sake.\u00a0 They haven’t made themselves indispensable to the broad mass of scientists.\u00a0 And it is unlikely that any one site could serve such a diverse market as “scientists” in all disciplines.<\/p>\n

ResearchGate, founded in 2008, is currently getting a good deal of publicity. I have had several emails and a couple of phone calls from them in the last few months. The dreaded FB phrase has appeared in some\u00a0press coverage<\/a>. A\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0article about open science\u00a0<\/a>devotes quite a bit of space to ResearchGate, and The Economist<\/em> just published a short piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ResearchGate\u00a0has been growing rapidly in terms of membership, numbers of staff and has some serious investors. It is based in Berlin and Boston, established by a medical researcher at Harvard Med School, Ijad Madisch. The NYT piece says:<\/p>\n

Dr. Rajiv Gupta, a radiology instructor who supervised Dr. Madisch at Harvard and was one of ResearchGate\u2019s first investors, called it \u201ca great site for serious research and research collaboration.\u201d\u00a0 [It has] profile pages, comments, groups, job listings, and \u201clike\u201d and \u201cfollow\u201d buttons can pose and answer questions… Users can create public or private discussion groups, and share papers and lecture materials. ResearchGate is also developing a \u201creputation score\u201d to reward members for online contributions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nature Network has a similar range of functions and also has an app platform, or workbench, but it has seemed a bit neglected in recent years. When I first looked at\u00a0ResearchGate a year or two back I thought it looked nice enough but it was hard to know whether it would really take off. My impression was that it was quite international, with many users from non-Western countries –\u00a0not just the usual suspects. Other competitors include LabLife<\/a>, Scientific Advisory Board<\/a> and Academia.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is some advertising blurb from ResearchGate, to give you more of a flavour of what they aim to achieve.<\/p>\n

\n
ResearchGate\u00a0www.researchgate.net<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is the world's largest \r\nprofessional network for scientists and researchers with over \r\n1,300,000 members worldwide and it is completely free.<\/em><\/span><\/pre>\n
As a member of ResearchGate, you can:<\/em><\/span><\/pre>\n