Open Science

Happy Spring Break, everyone!

Since you don't have any classes this week, you might have time to watch a video of the panel presentation: "Open Science: Good for Research, Good for Researchers?" that took place at Columbia University on February 19, 2009.

The speakers are:

• Bora Zivkovic, Online Discussion Expert for the Public Library of Science (PLoS) and author of "A Blog Around the Clock." (The "useful knowledge" image above is from his talk.)

• Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Coordinator of E-Learning for the School of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University and a practitioner of Open Notebook Science.

• Barry Canton, founder of Gingko BioWorks and the OpenWetWare wiki, an online community of life science researchers committed to open science that has over 5,300 users.
  

They discuss some interesting issues surrounding open science. What is it? How does it work? What are the benefits?