First Author*

Researchers will be interested to learn of two new science-focused collaboration tools, 2collab and Scirus Topic Pages. These were announced recently by Elsevier, the science, technology and medicine publisher, which had a hand in their development.

Both sites are intended to help librarians and researchers better utilize the wide range of information resources available in the online world.

2collab is a classic example of “Web 2.0″. It works like a social bookmarking site where you can store and organize internet resources – such as blogs, websites and research articles - and share them with private or public groups.

Members of groups can evaluate these resources (by rating bookmarks, tagging and adding comments), or add their own bookmarks. Users could be research groups, colleagues, friends or students, who want to share, collaborate or network.

It’s free to browse public groups and bookmarks, which presumably will enhance the site’s usefulness for networking. But users must register their email address in order to access the full functionality – such as creating groups, adding comments, and adding bookmarks.

Scirus Topic Pages is a topic-centered communication and collaboration platform for scientists. Like 2collab, it’s a free service.

The main feature is a Wiki-like application allowing selected experts to provide an authoritative summary of their specialist area, including definitive reference lists of key published papers, citations, Web sources and other supplementary materials.

Alongside this is a search engine seeking to provide the latest and most relevant journal and web results for each topic.

Some interesting ideas are coming out of the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin which ends today. These include Photosynth from Windows Live Labs, an application which creates 3D images from photographs and will eventually enable users to do this themselves and to map them onto Window’s Virtual Earth. Scientific applications are already evident from the ‘Synth’ created from images of the Space Shuttle Endeavour as part of a collaboration with NASA.

Last year we published an analysis of the wiki phenomenon and some of its implications for science. We’ve now updated this piece with discussion of some of Wikipedia’s new scientific rivals as well as a new section on the growing trend towards ‘expert’ wikis, where editing is reserved for those considered to be specialists in the field in question. You can download the updated piece below, while the original ‘Wide World of Wikis’ remains online.

Wiki Watch

Search engines provide researchers with an ever-expanding range of options for finding articles and evaluating the quality of papers. Here we look at some of the new ways of identifying relevant research, representing the links between papers, and saving and sharing search results.

In the last month, Elsevier has launched two free online medical repositories, OncologySTAT and DoctorPortal.

OncologySTAT is the more impressive of the two. It is open to anyone and features over 100 peer-reviewed journals. DoctorPortal is available only to doctors and contains extended content for two magazines - Doctor and Hospital Doctor - plus space for discussion.

While these new resources provide free access to content previously available only to paying subscribers, it is interesting to note how Elsevier is trying to recoup some of the money it would previously have gathered through subscription fees. Both sites are funded by advertisements, and require registration. In theory, the registration list could be sold on to advertisers.

Also, as noted on Peter Suber’s Open Access News page, users are forbidden from copying and distributing any content, which is far from the ideal of allowing copying as long as the source is properly cited.

Back in February, the First Author article Virtual Public Networks discussed how virtual networks, such as Second Life, could be used for collaboration and visualization in science. And this raised a question - with ever improving performance, is Second Life now a viable medium for virtual poster sessions and conferences?

A few months later, we’ve had opportunity to go back and look at how Second Life (SL) is actually being used.

As might be expected, examples of educational use far outnumber examples of research collaboration. There are hundreds of science exhibits, including a Gene Island and several planetaria. And there are some great attempts at innovation in distance learning - for example quizzes where students can meet each other and discuss the science while they solve the problems.

Cynics still have cause to argue that because it takes time for new users to orient themselves in the virtual world, SL will struggle to break out of the student demographic. But small groups are already taking the plunge, and as Linden Lab’s John Lester says, “Second Life is no more a game than the Web is a game. It’s a platform.”

Voice enabling technology is still at the development stage, but ultimately could surely bring in a wider community of users. The potential is clear for scientists wanting to “meet” other scientists without spending money on flights and conference hotels, and without the coldness of some online forums.

But why not judge the quality of the platform for yourself? Below are a few links we suggest as a good starting point for those new to SL:

• Google Calendar of upcoming science-related events in SL.
• Second Nature [SL registration required] is a virtual island, set up as a speculative venture by Nature. Here you will find helpful lists of events, plus multimedia presentations discussing the advantages of SL as a collaborative medium.
• Second Nature’s most recent event was a talk by Dr Phil Holliger about ancient DNA. You can read the transcript, slides and discussion on Joanna Scott’s blog for Nature.
  
• SciFoo Lives On is an online continuation of the SciFoo conference, meeting weekly in SL. Here you can find notes and transcripts from past sessions, and details of upcoming sessions.
• An interesting recent SciFoo session, Communicating Science with Video, discussed the emergence of sites such as JoVE, Bioscreencast, SciVee and SciTalks. The event was live blogged by ScienceRoll.

Hublog has commented on a recent paper which quantified the usage of the ‘Related Articles’ feature of PubMed, in non-trivial searches.The paper concluded that at least 1/5 of all searches relied on Related Articles to find relevant literature.

According to Hublog and many of the blog’s readers, the chronological presentation of search results can be quite difficult to navigate, and it is the ‘Related Articles’ feature which is generally more fruitful. However, the scientists at First Author acknowledge that both search filters are useful, as the most current information can be incredibly useful to find, while the related articles link can be vital in supplying background literature.

We covered some of the potential uses for social networking sites and virtual worlds in our article Virtual Private Networks. Some interesting potential uses for the medical profession are suggested in Science Roll. A good overview of the Royal Institution’s Science in Virtual Worlds is posted in Nascent and there is a list of suggestions for scientific activities in Second Life - including the creation of a virtual ecosystem called Terminus - on Nature Network London.

The recent Economist Technology Quarterly has speculated as to the possible evolution of online virtual worlds. Currently, virtual worlds such as Second Life and massively multiplayer online games exist only in a specific server which holds all the data needed to model the synthetic realm and to coordinate the actions of different players. The “client” software on your computer updates the server with your every move, and the server renders a three-dimensional world based on streaming data coming in from all client computers. However, each virtual world requires its own server, and participants cannot move from one virtual world to another.

The Economist likens this proprietary system to organization of the internet in its early days. Initially internet users required a specific service, such as AOL or CompuServe, which existed in separate communities with distinct ways of accessing information. What we all know happened on the internet, of course, was that the web came along and provided common, open standards for both client and server software, doing away with proprietary online services and bringing together online communitites.

A firm called Multiverse Network hopes to open virtual worlds and multiplayer games in the same fashion that the web opened up the internet. Multiverse was founded by four Netscape veterans, who decided that working together to create a multiplayer game was infeasibly expensive and time consuming for their small team. Instead, Multiverse has created multiplayer online game client and server software based on open standards, and a way to move between virtual worlds built on its platform, just like following a link from one page to another. Further, it has made its software free to anyone who wants to build and host an online world.

As with the web, the hope is that the emergence of a single, open platform will encourage wider adoption and new uses of the technology. While lots of companies are establishing their own niches in “Second Life,” some companies may see the Multiverse software as an opportunity to set up their own worlds, rather than an island in someone else’s world. The challenge in this model is that companies will then have to independently attract visitors to their worlds, where in Second Life, the large mass of users already provides the perfect target for advertising. However, companies seem to have been successful in attracting website hits, and this challenge is no different. In fact, Corey Bridges, a team member of Multiverse, has already noted the exciting possibilites if Google or Yahoo were to add support for searching throughout worlds.

Three forthcoming events at the University of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education explore Web 2.0 as a business model. The sessions will focus on mobile social networking and user generated content. Registration is open now.

Mobile Social Networking - the Financial Saviour of the Mobile Sector (3 July 2007, University of Oxford, UK) Designed for those involved in the management and technical aspects of the mobile sector, this course will give an overview of the mobile social software, focus on the youth sector, and conclude with a discussion of the future of mobile applications in the context of social networking.

User Generated Content and Web 2.0 - A Strategic Viewpoint for Decision Makers (5 July 2007, University of Oxford, UK)
Designed for decision makers, this intensive one-day course offers an opportunity to learn more about the threats and opportunities arising from user generated content.

Mobile Web 2.0 and IMS : User Generated Content (from a telecoms / infrastructure perspective) (6 July 2007, University of Oxford, UK)
Designed for operators, people working in standardisation as well as software architects, this intensive one-day course will have a dual perspective. It will approach Web 2.0 from the user perspective and also from the IMS standpoint. It will cover the basics of IMS and will then discuss how IMS would apply in a user generated content / Web 2.0 world.

These events were also noted by Tim O’Reilly. We discussed the emergence of the mobile web in our article, ‘Mobilising Scholars‘, first published last year. For more information about mobile Web 2.0, the Open Gardens blog provides regular updates and has a page of Ajax FAQ.