Nature Network is featured in an article in a major UK daily newspaper, the Guardian today. I thought it raised some interesting points. It mentioned an unnamed faculty member who said that communications on NN, Facebook and similar sites were “dangerous” because they are not peer reviewed.

I would say that this person doesn’t quite get the point of websites like ours. We’re not about peer review. We’re meant to be a more informal venue of discussion, which we think has its place alongside peer reviewed research.

The article quotes my boss, Timo Hannay:

“There should be a way of measuring the impact of a scientist who posts comments on a site like Nature Network. These could be added to their publishing record for the research assessment exercise [in which every active researcher in every university in the UK is assessed by panels of other academics]. I think the funding bodies will see that these contributions add to the scientific knowledge base.”

What do you think about that? How realistic is this: online discussions being included in the publication record of a scientist?

(Unfortunately, the article overemphasizes the potential use of the site for dating. Don’t worry, we’re not turning into a dating website…it’s only something that we’ve joked about very very informally over drinks.)