Now, about that filter..

Now, about that filter... Managing scientific information overload on the web NFAIS Meeting 28 February 2010, Philadelphia

Some of the people who contributed to this presentation...

@communicating Plausible Accuracy PIERRE LINDENBAUM Mummi Thorissson John Fabiana Kubke Richard Grant Pedro Beltrao Neil Saunders Steve Wilson @gnat Branwen Hide Simon Coles Dupuis Simon Philips Pawel Szcsesny Paul Miller Tony Hey Jeremy Frey Nico Adams Richard Akerman Cavalli Gabriel JonMat Todd Stephen BrennerTim O’Reilly Noel Gorelick Dave de Roure Rich Apodaca Udell ISIS LSS Group Jeremiah Faith Jean-Claude Bradley Nicholas Cole Michael Barton JOHN WILLINSKY Phil Lord Victoria Stodden Martyn Bull Stephen Friend David CrottyClay Shirky @t John Cumbers Bora Chris Leonard Grace BaynesEva Amsen Egon Willighagen Mark Borkum Brian Kelly Tony Williams Dan Hagon Maxine Clarke Andrew Milsted Zivkovic Mitch Koch Lab Michael Nielsen Martin Fenner Steph Hannon WaldropGreg Wilson Brian Matthews Leigh Dodds Bill Hooker Glyn Moody Yaroslav Nikolaev Jenny Rohn Rafael Sidi Lee Smolin Frank NormanRicardo Vidal Iain Emsley Paulo Nuin Ariel Waldmann Timo HannayKen Shankland Lorie LeJeune Jonathan Gray PT Sefton Microsoft STFC Deepak Singh Shirley Wu ISIS Computing Group Helen Berman Andrew Peter Binfield Benjamin Good Dorothea Salo Liz Lyons PLoS Kasarskis Jen Dodd Lee Dirks Peter Murray-Rust Richard Akerman Carole Goble Jon Eisen Jenny Hale Lakshmi Shastry Steve Koch NPG Ben Goldacre Chad OrzelBill Flanagan Jon Tansley Michael Eisen Matt Wood SciFoo 2008/9 Friendfeed Hope Leman Rufus Pollock Victor HenningGoogle Björn Brembs Jo BadgeAllyson Lister Lisa Green TIM HUBBARD Rebecca Goulding campers Euan Adie John Andy Powell Harry Collins Gavin Bell Jim Downing Matt Johnson Wilbanks Mike Ellis DUNCAN HULL Garret Lisi Jamie McQuay ALAN CANN Catherine Jones Andrew Farke Gavin Baker Peter Suber Sabine HossenfelderFlickr The BioGangKevin KellyPaul Walk Arfon Smith Kaitlin Thaney Richard Curry Atilla Csordas Ian Mulvany

Back to them later...

Me: A brief history

Finished highschool 1990... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/elsie/105716382 CC-BY

Undergrad 1991-94

First email addresss -1991 http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bike/3046589822 CC-BY-SA

“You need to spend half a day a week in the library reading the new journals” My project supervisor, 1994 http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/stevecadman/486261295 CC-BY-SA

PhD 1995-99

Discovered web - 1995

http://web.archive.org/web/19990421174831/www.sciencemag.org/

http://web.archive.org/web/19990208214440/http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Over the course of my PhD...

...day to day search went from...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/stevecadman/486261295 CC-BY-SA

...to...

http://web.archive.org/web/19990208214440/http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

And on top of that...

...data. No longer just papers

Submissions to Genbank 100,000,000,000 75,000,000,000 50,000,000,000 25,000,000,000 0 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006

Average Capacity of Human Scientist 5.00 3.75 2.50 1.25 0 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006

By 2001/2...

...everyone I know is subscribed to TOC alerts

...and no-one I know is reading them...

Information overload... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dylanroscover/3450505729 CC-BY-SA

So how are those filters getting on? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/daveyll/332723930

Search is (by far) the dominant filter

So the state of the art is an RSS feed of a text search...

...and that’s only on the abstracts not the full text

...which is a bit http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/contortyourself/3902224062 CC-BY-SA

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/vagawi/3155400274 CC-BY So do I..?

Absolutely not!

Sidestep: Let me...

An assertion.

In the area of social web tools for scientists I am confident that every significant (public) document and announcement crosses my attention stream.

Without active searching.

http://friendfeed.com

http://tinyurl.com/dku869

A shared social net

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/joi/2941559903 CC-BY Sharing the load

Social aggregation...

...but still a filtering problem

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/qnr/1263648697 CC-BY-SA Each interaction adds value...

...and each interaction measures value... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3209939998 CC-BY

Collaborative aggregation Collaborative abstraction Collaborative indexing Collaborative prioritisation

Based on the network I built http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/luc/2515255357

...but...

...will only work where a community exists http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mararie/3313582639/ CC-BY-SA

...and shares a set of tools http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/batega/1596898776 CC-BY

...or rather...a framework http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/sparker/290754127 CC-BY

We’re a long way from the ideal...

So where next? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/davidmasters/2884480103 CC-BY

We need...

...better tools for aggregation, summarisation, integration...

•Rapid •Relevant •Filtered •Digestible •Interoperable •Comprehensive

...tools for building, maintaining, and measuring networks...

...if I’m relying on the network... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/luc/2515255357

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mgifford/3558463424 CC-BY-SA

...tools to summarise, filter, and integrate diverse sources of information...

...abstracts, summaries, indexes of people and the tools to help me use them to build the network I want...

Who might be well placed to do that? http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/richardmoross/3947406286 CC-BY

Cameron.Neylon@stfc.ac.uk http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen http://slideshare.net/cameronneylon Twitter: @cameronneylon Friendfeed: cameronneylon Thanks to: Sciencetwists, Friendfeeders, and the wider online community for ideas, criticism, and conversations. Deepak Singh, Larry Lessig, Andy Powell, and John Wilbanks for presentation inspiration. Flickr for images

Now, about that filter..

Cameron Neylon

Now, about that filter..