Make it a pub

by gailf548
Participation Value and Shelf-Life for Journal Articles:
[Via The Scholarly Kitchen]

Discussion forums built around academic journal articles haven’t seen much usage from readers. Lessons learned from the behavior of sports fans may provide some insight into the reasons why.

[More]

The scientific discussions that many researchers have found the most productive are often those sitting around a table in a informal setting, like a pub. These discussions are often wide-ranging and very open. They often produce really innovative ideas, which get replicated on cocktail napkins.

Some of the best ideas in scientific history can be found on such paper napkins. Simply allowing comments on a paper does not in any way replicate this sort of social interaction. But there already online approaches that do. We call them blogs.

Check out the scientific discussions at RealClimate, ResearchBlogging or even Pharyngula. Often the scientific discussions replicate what is seen in real life, with lots of open discussion about relevant scientific information.

If journals want to create participatory regions in their sites, they might do well to mimic these sorts of approaches. David Croty at Cold Spring Harbor has such a site. Although it has not reached the popularity of RealClimate, it is a nice beginning.

I would think that research associations, with an already large audience of members, would have an easier time creating such a blog, one that starts by discussing specific papers but is open to a wide ranging, semi-directed conversation.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Science, Web 2.0

The eBook revolution

[Crossposted at Path to Sustainable]
by goXunuReviews
Kindle readers beware – big Amazon is watching you read 1984:
[Via LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News]

John Naughton says The ebook reader may have advantages over unwieldy printed tomes, but it has unexpected drawbacks. “You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that this would not be tolerated in the real world of physical objects.Yet it’s commonplace – indeed universal – in the world of information goods. And what makes it possible is the “End User Licence Agreement” (EULA) that most of us click to accept when we first use hardware, software or online services.”

[More]

eBook readers are changing the market. Imagine being able to carry all your college textbooks, with color pictures and movies, on a very small tablet-like device.

Although we are not there quite yet, we are not too many years from that being reality at any American college. Add the interactive aspects of a computer, WiFi and the web and the very nature of seminars will be forever changed.

But there is a possible dark side. Because the companies that offer these eBook readers are in it for the money not for the education. Everyone agrees to a license agreement (EULA) in order to download and read the book.

The Kindle EULA is a good example. Section 3, which deals with “Digital Content” (such as downloaded books), says that “Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content.” In other words, you are forbidden to lend or sell the book you’ve just “bought”. In real-world terms, you can’t lend your copy of 1984 to a friend or donate it to the school jumble sale.

Under the subsection on “Use of Digital Content’, the Kindle EULA says: “Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use.”

Agreeing to a license in order to just read a book! In this case, you do not really own the book and can not loan it to anyone for any purpose. Any markups you make on the text may not be permanent. You may not be allowed to print out any pages. If you want to sell a textbook you no longer need, tough luck.

You ability to do any of these things depends on the kindness of the corporation making the eBook reader.

If you want to do something novel with the text, too bad. You are only allowed to do what the manufacturer allows you to do.

If they decide to wipe your eBook, removing books and notes, they have that ability and you agreed to it. So, they could provide you with a textbook that can only be used for 1 year. You never get access to it again if you need it. And there would really be little incentive for them to reduce prices much.

I could imagine a Fahrenheit 451 future where paper-based books are destroyed, not for censorship reasons, but because corporations do not like the freedom they provide for the user (i.e. freedom to resell, to loan. to read without a license). eBooks give them much more control over the market.

eBooks can change things. That is for sure. But they also put much greater control in the hands of the corporations than any form of publication has before.

I expect some really important battles here as we work through the technology. Particularly the three way tug between publishers, universities and students.

Of course, in this future world, competition comes from totally novel areas – free textbooks. They were never feasible before but because of the Web, they are now a viable alternative. I expect these new market forces will put pressure on the eBook reader manufacturers and keep them from being too abusive with their licenses.

That is, as long a free is available on the Web, which assumes that net neutrality continues to be the norm. Otherwise, large corporations could restrict access to sites offering low cost alternatives to their products.

Truly a Brave New World that have such marvels in’t. And we have front row sets to not only watch this as it progresses but to take part and help determine its course.

Technorati Tags: Education, Open Access, Web 2.0

Fun to read

Book reviews by email. Slate has been doing this while, printing emails and responses about books. This one, dealing with the excellent new book, Denialism, is really very interesting. It reminds me of some of the best correspondence exchanges form the 19th Century.

I have not been a big fan of Mooney’s book, Unscientific American, because I think his focus is misplaced. But his dialog with Spector is quite fun to read. The ‘dueling’ emails, with some really great insights, allowed each other to respond in ways that were not only fun to read but extended the discourse.

Producing swine flu vaccine

by themissiah

Barbara Ehrenreich on the swine flu supply problem

[Via Effect Measure]

I first read Barbara Ehrenreich in 1971 when she wrote The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics with her (then) husband John Ehrenreich (Health PAC, 1971). She was by then a PhD in cell biology (Rockefeller University) and anti-war activist. We traveled in the same circles and I knew her slightly at the time. Her next book, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (with Deirdre English) was a new reading of women in medical history. It was an influential text in the emerging women’s health movement. Since then she has published many books, several making the best seller lists and throughout an astute and still influential observer. Now she has penned a brief comment on the the alleged swine flu vaccine supply problem and who’s to blame. And I find myself in complete agreement with her:

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There is a really nice discussion in the comments about many aspects of the shortage and the place for Pharma in vaccine production. The big problem with the delivery of so many doses is actually one that most Big Pharma could have answered honestly 6 months ago with a ‘gray’ answer, rather than the black and white one we all wanted.

First, the normal seasonal vaccine had to be made. This is already a massive enterprise, one that has resulted in shortages in years past when things got messed up in the process.

Second, an additional 120 million doses needed to be made and packaged using the H1N1 virus. While the process should have been just like normal seasonal flu, there was one problem, one that has popped up before and resulted in some shortages – the production of vaccine per egg was lower than normal So it required even more specially treated fertilized chicken eggs to produce the large number of doses than normal.

Most research personnel, when asked what they could produce, might have said 120 million, assuming things remain the same as usual. The assumption gets removed by the time upper management hears it and the government does not really want to hear the full answer. Everyone has an incentive to say “yeah. 120 million doses.”

Sometimes, yields are not as expected. This can usually be overcome by just using more eggs. But I would expect that there really were no more eggs available in the timeframe needed.

So, when things start heading south, people do what people do. Hope something fixes the problem. Make sure they are not the ones who get the blame. One way to do that would be to extend the effectiveness of the doses by using adjuvants or reduced doses.

And we have seen attempts at both of those. I think they really hoped that they could get an effective 120 million doses by using such measures. It was only in the last month of so that they realized that even these would not be effective.

As often happens in human endeavors, hope was the plan.

One big problem is that market forces for vaccine development are not always useful for producing the best vaccine for the public. Millions of cheap doses are not something that is attractive to many companies. And they have little incentive to develop new and better technologies which can cost billions and take a long time for their costs to be recouped.

Thus we are still using 50 year old, or more, technology for almost all of our vaccines. This needs to change.

Because someday, an avian flu virus will produce a pandemic. And little vaccine will be able to be produced.

Avian flu kills birds. Chicken eggs are from birds. Trying to produce flu vaccine in chicken eggs using avian flu results in very, very (if any) vaccine. Luckily, the current pandemic flu permits some vaccine to be produced, even at lower levels.

If it was avian flu, we might not be able to produce any vaccine in chicken eggs at all.

We need some of the better approaches that are wending their way through approval.

[Listening to: Skateaway from the album "Private Investigations - The Best Of" by Dire Straits]