1. FoRC
The Future of Research Communications
Session on “The Future”
Tim Clark
Harvard Medical School / MGH
© copyright 2011

2. Issues Today
• Publications deluge / data deluge ?
• Repeatability, citability, “mashability”
• Algorithmic assistance to researchers
• Web of data & Web of documents
• Walled gardens vs interoperability
• ... [ paste your issue here] ...

3. Drivers
• Scientific, technical and social challenges
• Moore’s Law, the Web, Instrument platforms
• Research / education funding levels +/-
• Profits - publishers, pharmas, IT, ...
• Open source & open access communities
• The scientific community & its needs

4. A little history
Scientific
printing GPO
print Journal
culture
c. 1450 1660 1665
IBM S/360 Internet Web
Web
culture
1964 1980s 1991

5. A table of data from Philos Trans R Soc Lond 1(4):56

6. design for air pump, Boyle & Hooke 1659

7. Curator of Experiments Secretary
Members, Subscribers and
Correspondents

8. “virtual witnessing”
Social Studies of Science, Vol. 14, No. 4. (Nov., 1984), pp. 481-520.

10. “virtual witnessing” c. 2011

12. CAUTION: contains rhetoric - do not remove*

13. CAUTION: contains rhetoric - do not remove*
*actual data may not be included

14. Core Pattern

15. Core Pattern
argument, claim, terminology, evidence

16. What Shapin teaches us
• scientific publications are arguments to
witnesses, supported by evidence
• instruments (including software) are
important, but not all-important
• the scientific social community is critical

17. Ecosystems
• We are designing for ecosystems
• People, technologies, publications, data, all
have to work together as an ecosystem
• Key artifacts and activities have multiple
roles and social consituencies
• The future ecosystem grows from the
present ecosystem

18. Questions
• Why does Shapin call scientific papers a
literary “technology”?
• What makes something an “ecosystem”?