Social networks for scientists
Deepak Singh and Cameron Neylon - Science Online 09

Facebook helps people find people

Scientists need to find people

Therefore scientists need facebook

Lots of Facebooks...

EthicShare: http://ethicshare.cs.umn.edu/a...
Neetz: http://www.neeetz.com/ (not a network, but a platform for creating same)
Plaxo: http://www.plaxo.com/ (Facebook alternative?)
iBreadCrumbs: http://www.ibreadcrumbs.com/ (collaborative online research)
SciSpace: http://scispace.net/
JeffsBench: http://jeffsbench.com./ (more a community than an app)
MyExperiment: http://www.myexperiment.org/
Ning: http://www.ning.com/ (another platform for building networks)
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/
LabMeeting: http://www.labmeeting.com
SciBook: http://www.facebook.com/apps/a... (inside FaceBook)
Labspaces: http://labspaces.net/
ResearchCrossroads: http://www.researchcrossroads....
AcademiaConnect http://academiaconnect.org/
Mendeley http://www.mendeley.com/
BiomedExperts: http://www.biomedexperts.com/
Ologeez!: http://ologeez.stanford.edu/
NewResearcher: http://www.newresearcher.com/
Lots and lots and lots and...
LiquidPub: http://project.liquidpub.org/, http://liquidpub.org/
Wikigenes: http://www.wikigenes.org/ Blog collections: Nature Network,
http://www.cogito.org/ ScienceBlogs, Scientific Blogging, Wordpress,
http://www.scilink.com/ Blogspot, (OpenWetWare)
http://www.scilife.net/ Blog aggregators: Postgenomic,
http://www.lalisio.com/ ChemicalBlogspace, ResearchBlogging
http://www.rxpgonline.com/ Social Networks: Laboratree, Ologeez,
http://www.graduatejunction.com/ Research Gate, Epernicus, LabMeeting,
http://www.scienxe.org/ Graduate Junction (Nature Network), SciBog,
http://www.scientificblogging.com/ SciMeet, SciSpace, WAYS
http://www.authoratory.com/ Protocol sharing: Scivee, Bioscreencast,
http://www.academia.edu/ OpenWetWare, YouTube, Protocolsonline,
http://www.bioforge.be/intermedi/ MyExperiment
http://scholarz.net/ Literature sharing: citeulike, connotea,
http://ways.org/ delicious, Bibsonomy, 2collab, Zotero
http://www.shvoong.com/ (upcoming 2.0 version)
http://www.spreadingscience.com/ Others: Friendfeed, Twitter, GoogleDocs,
http://pronetos.com/ GoogleGroups, Upcoming, Seesmic,
http://www.internations.org/ eventseer.net
http://www.active-project.eu/

Restricting ourselves to
social networking sites
does anyone use these?

Quality/usefulness?

Fatal flaws - 1
• Social networks rely on network effects
• No members means no network
• If I arrive and no-one else is there why
would I come back
• Must provide up front value - solve a
problem I know I have - only a few of the
current offerings do this

Fatal Flaws - II
• Scientists are not very social...
• Are looking for solutions; not for people
It’s not the scientists that are social - it’s the data
(I think paraphrased from Neil Saunders)

Five guidelines for online services
1. Tool must solve an existing (and pressing) problem
and fit an existing workflow
2. Tool must clearly outperform any existing tools that
are available to the user
3. The service must be near 100% reliability
4. Provide at least one killer feature
5. Prepopulate. Don’t provide new users with an online
wasteland; they won’t come back