Uncensoring Open Science?Richard William FysonWeb Science DTC [1]

29th March 2012

Outline• Introduction – what is Web Science...and what is

my research about?• Chemist’s Point of View – why has academic

publishing changed so little in Chemistry• Technical Solutions – a look at some technological

developments that may help• Social Solutions – sociological theories and

practices which may show how to get the best results

• Conclusion

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Introduction• Web Science is an interdisciplinary subject, using

both technological developments and social theories in research.

• Uncensoring Open Science asks why some disciplines, such as chemistry are not embracing open access publishing unlike other, similar disciplines, such as physics.

• Modern experimental methods produce vast amounts of data – much goes unpublished and what is published may not be in the most appropriate format.

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Technical Social

Epistemology

Knowledge Manageme

nt

Game Theory

HCI

Provenance

Semantic Web

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Chemists’ Points of View• Publishing work outside a journal...

– may be bad for your career and reputation– may make yourself vulnerable to IP theft– may result in poor quality or inaccurate

research• Chemists also see the benefits...

– access to more data in more appropriate formats– makes experiments more repeatable

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Technical Solution - Provenance• Provenance can provide both trust in the data’s

accuracy and ownership.

• A directed acyclic graph can be used to represent all of the actions, compounds and people that have been involved in the data’s lifecycle.

• Provenance can be either prospective (looking forward) or retrospective (looking back).

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Technical Solution• Electronic Lab Notebooks

and Semantic Web make recording provenance possible.

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http://blog.labguru.com/bench-meet-tablet/

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/orechem/

Social Solution• Game theory can be used to help predict what

actions people may take.

• Knowledge management theories can be used to promote different cultures in the research environment.

• Epistemology can be used to examine the different approaches of academic disciplines and identify what components may contribute to an open access culture. 8

Conclusion• The Web allows for lots of scientific data to be

published online for all to see and use.• But there are various reasons as to why

researchers may not be keen for this to happen.• Technological solutions to some of these problems

exist, but may not be enough to convince researchers.

• Therefore social theories help explain the consequences of introducing new technologies.

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