Open Source Science on the Internet

How can the Internet help spread scientific discoveries? The internet has heralded a new level of openness and data sharing since its inception. While this revolution of information has swept across our society, openly sharing information in the scientific arena has yet to see a boon in activity. With scientists remaining extremely protective over their discoveries, we have to ask if this behavior is hampering future scientific discoveries.

That is the question Dr Michael Nielsen, whose forthcoming book about Open Science “Reinventing Discovery", attempts to explain and fix.

If we want to socialize science among the world of social media and more broadly across the Internet, we must ask why scientists continue to "horde" data. How can we influence the world of scientific academia so that scientists feel more willing to share their best ideas and problems?

Nielson will be sharing his discoveries about how to build a Open Science revolution at the Public Library of Science on June 29th in San Francisco. As the PLoS site states:

"The net is transforming many aspects of our society, from finance to friendship. And yet scientists, who helped create the net, are extremely conservative in how they use it. Although the net has great potential to transform science, most scientists remain stuck in a centuries-old system for the construction of knowledge.

Michael will describe some leading-edge projects that show how online tools can radically change and improve science (using projects in Mathematics and Citizen Science as examples), and he will then go on to discuss why these tools haven’t spread to all corners of science, and how we can change that."

If you'd like to hear more about the Open Science movement and Nielsen's talk, visit PLoS or watch his TED Talk about Open Science:

37.7667851 -122.4125425