OpenWetWare:Headquarters/Research Pathway Brainstorming061308

General

• Tools for choosing what to work on and choosing when to stop

11 Publication:

Research is not conducted in vacuum need to couple conclusions and publications with the next set of questions. 1) a mechanism for going from a publication back to the idea pool 2) mechanism for others (possibly nonresearchers) to pose questions, problems, ideas for research

3.5 Background Research -> Experimentation

• Open funding and microfunding. Outsourcing in a lab. Lab needs resources, can plug into a microfunding model or network

4 Experimentation: • Standardized interfaces for controlling instrumentation via OWW • Outsourced experimentation

• Reward system for amateur researchers • Academic “innocentive” for research: Is there a way to orally ingest perfume?” “I’d like a biobrick vector that does X” Research marketplace; a mailing list; Craigslist for research

1 Ideas Marketplace: Makes it easier to make a collaborative arrangement

• Microcredit for specialists who only want to work on part of the problem -> Attaching your credentials to a chunk of data

3 Background Research: -> REFERENCING Lots of reinventing of the wheel. Need crowdsourcing for background research. What are the standard set of references/citations for X. DOIs for sets of references; abstraction for references

•What’s the right way to present your data? --best practices for reporting data --Open data conventions; examples for presenting data; (e.g. error bars and statistics) • Meta level of finding publications • Semantic research of articles and a way of extracting info from them

• A way to ask research questions and find the right people who can answer

• Apply peer review earlier than the publication phase; rolling, cycle-wide peer review; PR at the idea stage (Dotted line to …) • Capturing the value of negative results; collecting all the stuff that doesn’t make it into the paper like peer review; deleted scenes, the director’s cut; alternate endings

8 – 11 As you hit a point in the review process should be less back and forth between you and the publisher, fewer publication delays. A publication process where the author has control; a centralized document -> CVS for publication: from submission to publication; Single document continuous version control.

• Tools for writing: “A sea of unreviewed manuscripts” where the editor comes to you. A manuscript marketplace. Allows for - rougher manuscripts - less stigma for having an error - Metric of error correction for each publication – finer-grained metrics

6 Analysis : An easy way to integrate your data into other people’s data sets

• More team projects what prevents it now? • Mechanisms for getting people to work together, better prizes and rewards

4 Experimentation Consensus protocols: Standardized versions of protocols that are easy to find and free;

• Different kinds of protocols and methods for all phases and aspects of research; Communities and networks at all steps, building on specialization in communities

• Better ways of getting your activities out in the world; subscribe to your colleagues work; Community building in the experimental cycle; Have a feed of “everyone else who’s using this protocol.