Must-read for Science Librarians: "Open Notebook Science: Implications for the Future of Libraries"

Jean-Claude Bradley's presentation "Open Notebook Science: Implications for the Future of Libraries" is a must-read for all research and science librarians if they want to know how science is starting to be, and will be, done. It should also be read by those who plan the futures of research and science libraries, in order to understand how, for instance, the millennials will be doing science, if they are not already.

Fundamental to this future (and present) are Open Access, Open Data, social (research) networking, the blogging/wiki/GoogleDocs/mailing-list dynamics, Wiki versioning (of experimental and other research activities), Second Life for presentations and teaching, and the necessity of machine-to-machine communications and interactions (see my earlier blog entry: New Open Access Criterion: Support access by machines").

Abstract: Open Notebook Science involves a variety of internet-based techniques for sharing of scientific information, from the use of wikis for experiments, to the Chemspider database, where chemists share molecules in a fashion that is socially (but not technically) similar to Wikipedia. Aspects of Open Notebook Science that are of relevance to librarians are discussed, such as automating of metadata for describing the steps of experiments, and the importance of using a 3rd-party wiki to record Open Notebook Science, so that contributions can be tracked and time-stamped. Bradley predicts movement towards more machine-to-machine communication, which will considerably speed up the research process.