We have quite a discussion going on my previous post! Anonymous, whoever you are, you have some very interesting things to say. Thank you. The following thoughts and musings were inspired by your comments:
Scientists, at least the ones I have met, are brimming with opinions. Most of the time, I don’t have to ask for those opinions - I am presented with them, over and over again. Sometimes loudly. Scientists ask questions at seminars all the time. Sometimes they really go on. Really. If questioning, giving opinions, and discussing are a part of every day science, why are online discussions of articles/manuscripts so slow to catch on?
Is attaching one’s name to a comment for all eternity an obstacle to online scientific discussions (or for commenting on the online manuscrips/articles)? As far as I am aware, no anonymous comments are allowed on either PLoS ONE or Nature Precedings. You have to have an account with a reasonably realistic name and affiliation in order to comment on the articles on these sites (note that this is not the case for JoVE – anonymous comments are permitted). The permanence of a comment and the ease with which it can be traced back to the commenter can be rather intimidating.
The fears are understandable. Say you have a negative comment or criticism of the work. I, for one, would be a lot less likely to leave that comment for fear that I will be 1) proven wrong, and/or 2) placed on a scientific black list that will affect my future chances at grants or manuscript publications. As huge as science is, the fields within it are remarkably small, incestuous, and often competitive. Everyone knows everyone else. Open criticism, on record, is scary.
But what if your comment is simply a question, clarification, or an idea for future research? Is anonymity as much an issue then? Or is it just a pain to have to register an account? Is the solution to the low commenting problem as simple as streamlining or minimizing the registration process?
Naturally, disallowing anonymous comments has clear benefits – screening out rude or inappropriate comments, ensuring that people consider what they write before they write it - but are these benefits negated by the number of scientists that are deterred from commenting? Certainly there are ways to filter out the crazies without mandating every one put their name on their comments? Slashdot is a great example, one that relies on huge traffic for efficacy, but still, it is a functioning viable model of community comment moderation.
I can keep bringing up pros and cons till I (and you) turn purple, so I will stop here. Back to my original question. Why do people not comment? What has to change in order for commenting on online work to be as easy and natural as asking questions at a seminar?
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Going Incognito
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10 comments:
scientific community - lazy asses!
unfortunately :(((
it's very hard to make them start to comment,
and in the same time this is strange because modern scientist spend sometimes half of day in front of computer screen surfing in internet.
We should find way to stimulate them and advertise scientific web.
Wait, so can we have conflicting positions. Here is what I am hearing:
1. Fear
2. Laziness
3. Effort
4. Content
I set up a small poll. Would people be so kind as to give us some feedback? The poll can be found here.
Thanks for setting up the pole Nikita !!
It's interesting that the poll about why people don't comment asks for your name, email, and a comment...
Yea, that did not escape my attention. The irony is palpable.
I'm not sure slashdot is the model you want to follow. It was nice when it started and moderation and karma are helpful but now there is much more noise drowning out the signal. It could just be huge popularity and regression to the mean. Most people I know have abandoned it for digg or reddit.
Don't confuse anonymity with pseudonymity. If you allow anonymous comments you'll get tons of spam, mostly people looking for a way to post an URL on the web with some text they want, so their Google Page Rank goes up. Letting people use pseudonyms allows them to build a reputation online without it necessarily affecting their real world reputation. And for those that don't care, they can just use their real names.
I could speculate at a lot of reasons for low comments, but I think in general it's a function of the number of readers. The ratio of commenters to readers at almost all non-trivial sites is low, I'd guess maybe 1%. Even at the science seminar I was at yesterday, maybe 2% of the audience asked questions. The best way to increase your number of comments is to increase your number of readers.
howard:
The low amount of people being the issue does not really explain the low ratios.
I think before asking why people do not comment, it is more important to ask why people do need to comment. What is the incentive for them to (peer) review scientific blogs as opposed to peer reviewing another journal peer review? Given the traditional scholarly communication model, it is rather obvious that finding a good journal paper to publish is far more significant and fruitful for the scientific community than finding a good blog post. So why bother with scientific blogs if time is of essence and peer reviewers are scarce?
My point was that 1% or 2% should be viewed as high, not low.
That most people do not participate or produce content is no surprise. It's well documented that only a small percentage are producers, a slightly larger number (10% or less) are active participants and pretty much everyone is a consumer.
Now, scientists are especially backward and resistant to change. I don't believe the focus should solely be on incentives. There is a change in attitudes that's required as well Why do people participate in newsgroups or usenets. There's always been a fairly active participation rate there, although once again, you find that the people who respond tend to be the same people, while others simply consume.
Here's a poll to take. How many scientists know about Connotea and CiteULike? If the number is > 30% that would astound me (asking JoVE readers is not a fair poll). There is a huge chasm that needs to be crossed, but we shouldn't despair either. We're still in the infancy of the web as a real medium for informal (and formal) scientific communication. Most journals don't even know what indexing means or are just figuring out, so we have a ways to go, but we'll get there.
I think that there is a fundamental problem in this issue that goes beyond fear, laziness, effort and content. I wrote an article to address this issue and I would like to invite you to the following link:
http://hematopoiesis.info/2008/04/06/time-for-change-open-communications-in-biomedical-science/
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