The UK's publicly-funded scientific research is going open access.
This is a Very Good Thing. And I'm quite impressed that the UK government has been pretty decisive about this; I was emailed by the MRC (my main funder) a while ago, telling me that publishing in an open access way was now a condition of funding.
Leaving aside the potential practical complications in making this happen (which other people have considered more than I have), why is this such a good thing? There are a number of reasons.
Firstly, there's the basic consideration of who's paying. In this case, it's the tax-paying UK public. So it seems entirely reasonable that they should have access to the research that they've paid for. It actually seems faintly ridiculous that this was ever not the case (although this was because pre-Web, the cost of distribution wasn't insignificant).
Secondly, and very importantly, it accelerates the pace of scientific research (which relates to this blog post). When I write a scientific paper, I want it to be accessible as rapidly as possible to as many people as possible, and as easy to access as possible. This means that my research can be read, assessed and acted upon as rapidly as possible, which means that people can benefit from my work and/or find ways to refine the ideas therein. Faster is better.
Thirdly, there's a very important consideration of public engagement with science. Science and scientific research are getting more and more complex with time, both because we're already discovered a lot of the easy stuff and also because we come up with progressively more clever ways in which to advance. This is great, but it does mean that it's increasingly difficult for the non-specialist to understand a lot of the good science that goes on. There are all sorts of efforts that are going on to try to address this, but one really good one is to try to make sure that anyone can access any piece of research.
My anecdotal view is that governments are in general pretty rubbish at having a clue about internet-related developments. Politicians are very busy people, making it hard to keep up with developments. I also suspect that the demographic profile of the current generation of politicians means there is a high proportion of Hapless Techno Weenies. But in this instance, they seem to have correctly identified an important internet trend and acted on it. Kudos for that.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Rapid Research Prototyping
Does research have to be this slow?
I find the pace of a lot of research projects frustrating. Sure, some things just take time, but I have become increasingly suspicious that a lot of bottlenecks in research are problematic simply because we haven't taken the time to find a faster way of doing something.
This can be very challenging. Experiments and data, for example, can be a lengthy and painstaking process. Data analysis, simulations/modeling, discussions with collaborators and even writing the paper can all take many months to complete. And of course we try to be efficient, but should we really care so much if things take a while to get done.
Yes.
And here's why.
Consider what science is. Science is the generation of new and improved memes for describing the natural world, whose fitness is judged using empirical evidence. It's a memetic process. This means that we should be thinking in terms of evolution of ideas. And one of the key ways in which we can accelerate any evolutionary process is the shorten the generation time. Because the sooner you get new research into the public domain, the sooner other people can benefit from it and the sooner you can get feedback.
There is also a second key point here. Scientific ideas gain most of their value from being tested by other people. And this can't happen until it's been released into the public domain. We should be thinking of our newly-minted science meme as no more a than prototype, that needs to be poked and prodded by as many other people as possible before it can even start to be thought of as being robust.
The idea of spending years or decades on a scientific magnum opus is the wrong plan; getting your work into the public domain is everything.
This absolutely does not mean lowering our standards with regards to quality; there is so much research being produced nowadays that we need to avoid drowning each other in mediocre research. But a single researcher or group can only make a science meme so good. Beyond a certain point, your idea needs to be tested by other people. At that point, faster is better. Much, much better.
What form, then, should science take in the 21st century. It should be about rapid research prototyping - the production and dissemination of new high-quality prototype science memes, as rapidly as possible.
Publish early, publish often. And optimise your bottlenecks.
I find the pace of a lot of research projects frustrating. Sure, some things just take time, but I have become increasingly suspicious that a lot of bottlenecks in research are problematic simply because we haven't taken the time to find a faster way of doing something.
This can be very challenging. Experiments and data, for example, can be a lengthy and painstaking process. Data analysis, simulations/modeling, discussions with collaborators and even writing the paper can all take many months to complete. And of course we try to be efficient, but should we really care so much if things take a while to get done.
Yes.
And here's why.
Consider what science is. Science is the generation of new and improved memes for describing the natural world, whose fitness is judged using empirical evidence. It's a memetic process. This means that we should be thinking in terms of evolution of ideas. And one of the key ways in which we can accelerate any evolutionary process is the shorten the generation time. Because the sooner you get new research into the public domain, the sooner other people can benefit from it and the sooner you can get feedback.
There is also a second key point here. Scientific ideas gain most of their value from being tested by other people. And this can't happen until it's been released into the public domain. We should be thinking of our newly-minted science meme as no more a than prototype, that needs to be poked and prodded by as many other people as possible before it can even start to be thought of as being robust.
The idea of spending years or decades on a scientific magnum opus is the wrong plan; getting your work into the public domain is everything.
This absolutely does not mean lowering our standards with regards to quality; there is so much research being produced nowadays that we need to avoid drowning each other in mediocre research. But a single researcher or group can only make a science meme so good. Beyond a certain point, your idea needs to be tested by other people. At that point, faster is better. Much, much better.
What form, then, should science take in the 21st century. It should be about rapid research prototyping - the production and dissemination of new high-quality prototype science memes, as rapidly as possible.
Publish early, publish often. And optimise your bottlenecks.
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