[OWW-SC] At this lab, everyone is required to maintain a science blog

[Mackenzie Cowell]

BoingBoing.net picked up on a post at ScienceBlogs.com about an  
evolutionary biologist who not only keeps a blog, but also requires  
all of the members of her lab to keep blogs on a semi-weekly basis  
about their work as well.

We should find out if she knows about OWW and if her lab and any  
others she knows about might be interested in switching their blogs  
from blogspot to OWW-blogs.

-Mac


Here's the post:
Anyway, it turns out that Rosie makes it a requirement for her lab  
members to maintain a blog. This was primarily to act as an appendum  
lab book, and a place to reflect on the experiments carried out  
recently.
Chatting with her, she was quite excited by the prospect of such a  
thing becoming common practice. She noted a number of side benefits to  
the process:

1. It allows her, as a supervisor, to remotely keep track on what's  
going on. Think of it as preface material before the lab meeting, or  
the one on ones.

2. She's convinced that with the public facade to the posting, folks  
in her lab tend to conceptualize more fully what the experiments and  
data could signify. In doing so, there's a great opportunity for  
blogging to help clarify the experiments necessary to move the  
research projects forward.

3. Scientists are not necessarily noted for their writing skills.  
Which is too bad, because that ability tends to come in very handy in  
the fine art of preparing grants. Here, you have a platform where you  
can work the "practice makes perfect" angle.

4. Depending on the tact of the blogger, you may inadvertently end up  
with a significant amount of draft material for that thesis or paper  
you going to have to write later.

Then, of course, Rosie got into the whole issue of open access. In  
that, her efforts to promote science blogging in her lab, could  
possibly be thought of as a powerful exercise in scientific  
communication. Imagine a scenario where facets of the standard "lab  
book" are offered for public viewing.

This means that things like negative data, serendipity findings  
(things that don't normally get published) have a chance to be  
publicly aired, which only adds to the body of scientific knowledge.  
And what about unpublished data? How open is that? For instance, Rosie  
herself has no qualms in presenting her grant proposals, even before  
competition deadlines.

Mind you, her lab happens to focus on a research area that is not too  
competitive, so the relative merits of what her lab's blogging is  
obviously subjected to this important nuance.

Still, it's interesting to imagine a scenario where what Rosie's lab  
does is common practice. i.e. what if NIH, NSERC, NSF, CIHR made it  
explicit in their funding structure.

Anyway, I've got two questions to throw at readers:

1. Is this a rare occurrence? I heard that boinformaticians might do  
this sort of thing, although it would still be primarily in the  
context of a private set-up.

2. What do you think? Is it a good idea, and if so, do you think you  
could convince your whole lab to follow suit?


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