Up on Science Exchange, I’ve written a post that describes the most ideal open notebook platforms and how they can be used for scientific documentation. Their design is certainly not intended for those purposes, but they are effective tools nonetheless. Here is a sample of the post:

There are consequently an array of open notebook platforms to choose from, and some better suited for certain applications than others. Five such platforms are discussed below, all capable of supporting scientific disciplines in varying aspects.

 

WordPress

 

Originally developed as a blogging platform, WordPress has become much more than that. It is the go to Content Management System (CMS) in web design, and is used for online shopping, blogs, artistic portfolios, personal websites, and even open notebooks. Personally speaking, WordPress is the most versatile platform for open notebooks and should be the model that open notebook designers look toward.

I also go on to discuss Media Wiki, Google Docs, Evernote, and Github. And you can check out the whole post here:

Open Notebook Series: Open Notebook Platforms

I think each service has a lot to offer to open notebook scientists, and with services like Evernote and Google Docs, you could certainly get away with using multiple services. Think combining Google Docs with WordPress/Media Wiki.

The most intriguing service to me is Github. If the wiki was more powerful, Github would be the ultimate notebook in my opinion. The reason is because you can upload any file type to your repository, and there is a social network, and you have access to a wiki to supplement your notebook. I haven’t played too much with the social network component, but if it is even 10% as effective as facebook it could prove very useful.

Github also makes sharing repositories easy and collaboration very easy. Anyone can fork your repository (make a copy to their repository) and if you are collaborating, pushing updates is at the discretion of the original repository’s owner. And it is all versioned in case some files get deleted.

And I’m not sure how true this is, but I’ve heard that Github is open sourced in some capacity so you may even be able to self host your own guthub repository. This would be amazing for ONS and scientists could setup their own lab site to enable collaboration amongst only the members of the lab.

And to further supplement my ONS Platform post, I offer some alternative platforms/tools to aid your open notebooking skills:

Creative Solutions to ONS

There are too many tools on the internet to keep track of, but if you don’t like the options that I mention in my post, here are a few creative alternatives that you may appreciate.

• Flickr/Picasa – Do you want to keep writing with paper and pen? Try taking pictures of your handwritten notes and upload them to one of the many photo sharing websites. I’ve done this from time to time and upload the image files here to supplement my notebook, when I don’t want to rescribe all the work I’ve already done.
• Social Media – The real-time capabilities of social media gives you the outlet to post what you want when you want it. Steve and I have used FriendFeed to take notes in real-time before facebook had the feature, and essentially you can do this from any social media platform available. If you use a platform like WordPress/Media Wiki, you can even embed your FriendFeed posts into your notebook and people could see your notes in real time in your native platform.
• Tablets/SmartPhones – There are plenty of apps that let you take notes, share images/videos, bridge platforms and publish to the web right from your phone/tablet. Who says you need to be tethered to your lab pc?
• Blogs – I’ve already talked about WordPress, which is more than a blog. But blogging services like Blogger and Tumblr offer comparable features. Blogger is trying to be more like a CMS, but still doesn’t have all the functionality of WordPress, but the Google Suite of Apps helps ease the burden quite a bit. Tumblr however is more limited in its capacity, but if you are going with just text and images for your notebook then it will suit you just fine.
• Wikispaces – Quick and easy wiki setup in the cloud. No need to self install like Media Wiki, but also not as customizable.

And if you use a tool that I haven’t mentioned I’d love to hear about it and how you make it work for you. ONS doesn’t work if it is tedious and you don’t want to update. The goal of technology is to enhance your workflow and make life a little easier. And I’ve found that the tools and platforms I mention above and in my post at Science Exchange aid my quest for scientific domination.

At the #scienceatrisk meeting in DC last week, a colleague asked me how I would make money from open notebook science. I was very surprised to say the least and I wasn’t entirely sure of the intentions of the comment. Was I being set up? Was I feeding this person the information they needed to create a business from a passion of mine? Regardless those answers, I played the game but not in the way I was expected to play.

You know me… I like to bend the rules.

So how would I (or anyone for that matter) make money from open notebook science?

Read carefully…

YOU CAN’T!

Nor should you. But before I get into all that, let me first say that if someone proves me wrong I’d be happy to help them in their endeavor (and claim NONE of the monetary rewards!). Now let’s get on with it…

I say you shouldn’t make money from open notebook science. ONS is a concept, and not really a tangible thing. You can make money from ideas by creation/production. But with ONS there is no production. The only thing I could think of making money from is education. That is, teach people about ONS, how to do it, and what’s available right now for interested parties to use. But it wouldn’t be very open if I kept that information to myself. That mentality is what put science in the predicament that it is in today. So I teach others for free!

But aside from the ethics of profiteering from ONS, it seems pretty near impossible to make money from it anyway.

1. You can’t charge people to use something they are already afraid to use. Correct me if I’m wrong, but any business that is built on making money from a product that has no market doesn’t survive very long. With open notebooks, scientists are already afraid of being open. They are already afraid of using online tools for research purposes. And a ton of research specific tools (including notebooks) have already failed. You just can’t say “Hey, I’ve got this awesome online notebook for you to use… it’s just $100 a month for your lab!” The culture is already opposed to the incentives offered by open science. Why stack the deck against it more? We need reasons for scientists to pursue open research, not make sure they never embrace it.
2. An online/electronic notebook is not the same as a paper notebook.Physical notebooks and pens/pencils are cheap. I may have been in the cloud for too long, but a notebook and pen combination can’t be more than $3. There aren’t too many online services that request less than $5 a month. So there is no competition with pricing. Also the entire world today is raised with writing on paper with pen/pencil. That is not the same experience as typing on a computer. Currently, open notebooks rely on the model that scientists will write some information in their paper notebook and then rewrite all that in their online notebook. This has to change. Technology is improving so scientists can go straight from experiment to the cloud. In my case, it took a few months of reprogramming (my brain that is) and this culture shift needs to happen as well. ONS systems can’t use the same workflow as paper/pen. If it does there is no competition.
3. Data comes in all shapes and sizes. Pictures, movies, text, code, numbers, spreadsheets, files, folders, measurements, etc. You may think you can develop a complete notebook platform, but you may just make a system so complete that you make it useful to only one person. Yourself. Maybe you get lucky and you make a notebook useful for a specific group of people, biologists. The point is, in today’s world data isn’t as cut and dry as it once was. And you would need to have a very flexible interface to make sure that more than one target group could use your system. As a graphic designer, a lot of my data is .ai files and .png files. As a biologist, a lot of my data is excel spreadsheets, .jpeg, and .avi. And as a physicist my data is written as code, equations, and connections. There isn’t a single tool on the internet that can easily handle all of that. And there may never be.
4. The open notebook needs to be flexible. This is an extension of the previous point, but if data comes in many varieties, then surely information does too. What about thought processes? Workflows? Outputs? There are too many variables and there isn’t one system that does it all well. We can’t even handle social media! Facebook, Twitter, Google+ all do the same job and all reach different audiences. The same will be said for ONS. Biologists, physicists, computer engineers, mathematicians, etc all execute research via differing methods. Should these scientists (and other fields of research not labeled in STEM) pursue open notebook science, they will require different types of notebook platforms. There is simply no way to plan and design a notebook system to meet the needs of everyone.

With all that said, why force scientists to use one platform, or force them to choose between a few options? Why not let scientists determine their own needs and be creative with how they share their science? If ONS is going to be the future of scientific research documentation, then it has to be as free flowing as possible.

Right now there are plenty of free and easy to use tools that are perfect for notebooks. And now is not the time to stifle a new movement by profiting off of it. But perhaps one day in the future (a looong time from now) there will be room to create an open notebook platform that people would WANT to pay for. And when that day comes, I’ll be excited for two reasons: (1) the culture of science has evolved for the better, and (2) I was there to get the ball rolling.

I’m going to be doing an interesting experiment. I’m writing a series of guest blog entries about open notebook science for Science Exchange. The first one is already published: What is Open Notebook Science? Here is a snippet:

Ideally, every scientist could maintain an open notebook in real-time which would encompass all aspects of their research. But many fears about dealing with complete open access, conflicts with patent applications and publications, and online data overload and hamper this movement. To combat this, practitioners (like myself) encourage any form of open notebook science, even if that means uploading some information for a project from many years ago that never saw the light of day.

From what I’ve heard it’s been pretty well received and people are clamoring for the second entry which I’ve just completed a draft of and should be revised and posted either tonight or tomorrow (of course I’ll link to that).

Now here is the interesting experiment part of it. I’ll be outlining major components of ONS over at Science Exchange, and I’ll be using this notebook to go into interesting details that I wouldn’t normally be able to on that platform. I’ve already discussed one such topic here a while ago: Is there room for advertising in open notebooks?

And if you have any questions about ONS, getting started, ways to enhance your notebook, or anything of that nature feel free to leave a question/comment either via Twitter, Facebook, the comments, or via email. I’m always all over communication!