This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.
For those interested in consistency of nomenclature, Jennifer Rohn (Mind the Gap) posts about some of the challenges, after discoverinng that a particular “gene’s ‘official’ symbol was ZNF265 according to OMIM, but ZRANB2 according to NCBI Entrez and HGNC.” As well as the challenge of researchers agreeing on common nomenclatures for entities such as genes and viruses with many variants (subtypes, polymorphisms and so on) and depositing the information in an appropriate database, the databases themselves sometimes do not update frequently. It does not get better, as Jennifer writes: “Looking up your new gene of interest in PubMed is not an easy way to grasp a coherent idea of what’s been published in the literature. Abstracts are littered with synonyms (and some pairs of different genes have the same synonym), but there is no unique gene identifier, as far as I can see, associated with the abstracts.” And, as Euan Adie remarks in the comment thread: “even if you used database identifiers instead of HGNC names you could run into trouble – in the abstract did you mean the gene as we knew it in 2000, or in 2002, after we discovered those extra exons? In the position it was in on the initial genome assembly, or a million basepairs further down in the latest version? The same gene in different contexts needs different identifiers (or at least version numbers), but you still need to be able to pull all that together somehow and pull out the information you need.” Further discussion continues, to which you are welcome to contribute. Views from authors (past, present and future) on topics such as this one are invaluable to journals in helping them to shape their policies.
So you use Nature Network, but what do you really think of the impact of Web 2.0 (the ‘social’ web) on research? The TalkScience team at the British Library has set up a group Scientific researchers and Web 2.0, posing a few questions about why busy scientists should invest in Web 2.0; using the web to share data and preprints; whether concern about confientiality will lead groups to set up “gated communities”; relevance of taxonomies, folksonomies, semantic web and other Web 3.0 concepts; and user-participation, necessary to keep these new web services alive. There are already discussions on scientific method in the era of big data, advertising by stealth, open notebook science, Web 2.0 in neuroscience, and more. Please join the group, which will be providing details of the TalkScience evening at the British Library in London in September, where some of these issues will be debated. Keep an eye out for the notice on this group to attend this free event.
The official programme for Science Blogging 2008 is now up. Whether you are a blogger and regular user of the Internet, or whether you have never written an online comment but are interested to learn more, this meeting is for you, so please head on over to the Nature Network group to find out more about the programme, contribute to the make-up of the sessions, discover where to find cheap accommodation, and sign up for some science-themed outings. As a taster, here is the abstract for one panel: “Mistrust of scientists is common, and misinterpretation of scientific results rampant. Science blogs can serve as a bridge between scientists and the general public. Blogs build a community of scientists in which they can discuss the peculiarities of their jobs, their work, and their results. More than that, science blogs have the power to demystify the scientific process for the public and to reverse deeply held stereotypes of scientists. In this session, we will discuss how science blogs can change the public’s perception of scientists and provide a support framework for scientists themselves.”