Nature Network is now live. Please log on and experiment, spread the word to your own scientific network, and contact us with any questions or suggestions. You can use the site to create personal profile pages to describe yourself and your research. You can form topic-based groups, contribute to forums, view and announce seminars and conferences, read news and browse local job listings.
We hope that the network will help scientists everywhere to identify like-minded researchers, hold online discussions, showcase their work via personal homepages, share information with groups (open or private), comment on content and tag it. Participation is free to all, requiring little more than www.nature.com registration. Like all Web 2.0 products, launch is the beginning, not the end, of the road, so user-driven upgrades will be added regularly from now on.
Nature Network will, we hope, stimulate and facilitate scientific communication and collaboration in innovative, flexible and forward-thinking ways. It should be especially appealing to postdocs and junior faculty.
Nature Network also features local hubs, offering all the global tools plus area news, features, blogs, jobs and events. The first local site is Nature Network Boston, which has been in beta version over the past eight months, and now containing new features. Nature Network Boston supports, celebrates and connects scientists in the city, with rich daily editorial coverage of Boston-area research and researchers, Boston bloggers, a calendar of Boston-area lectures, seminars and conferences and listings of Boston-area jobs for scientists. Coming in March: Nature Network London.
An early indicator of the potential of the Nature networks is shown by Michael Durney, a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, who has grown his Biomolecular NMR Spectroscopy group on Nature Network Boston from less than 10 members to 40. Groups like Durney’s will continue to grow, and will become more international, at which point online data-sharing tools that NPG will provide, would start to become useful. The value of the networks lies in information about local organizations, research and events, ensuring relevancy for the user as well as allowing scientists attending conferences or visiting those areas for other reasons, to find local events and connect with like-minded researchers. We hope you’ll use the network, and give us your opinion of it.