Programme

Can blogging help your next grant proposal and if so, how? How can blogging be used to increase the visibility and impact of published research? Tips and tools on how to balance the competing demands of blogging and a scientific career, and how best to use blogging as a career-boosting activity.

Science blogging exists within a ethical and legal framework. This session, presented by two prominent bloggers, will chart the legal and ethical boundaries of blogging and what you can – and cannot – blog about.

Topics to be covered include professional obligations, confidentiality and privacy, and libel and copyright. The session will also address your personal wellbeing in the face of any potential complaints and legal threats, and also how to engage with blog comments in a professional manner.

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Is the traditional paper format derived from the printed paper still appropriate today? How can new kinds of content such as audio, video, 3D structures, etc. be integrated into a research paper? Can a scientific paper contain just datasets or descriptions of a method? And how does free access to a paper change the way we use the information contained in a paper?

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How can research and educational outreach organizations use online tools such as blogs, Twitter, etc. to communicate science? In this audience participation session, the speakers will use real-world examples to spark discussion about some of the issues involved, including overcoming resistance in the institution, tone of voice, and constraints around talking about animal research or other sensitive topics.

This session will provide you with an inside look into how online science communities are built and maintained. We will discuss how to manage expectations, social/cultural issues, the role of moderation, differences between science communities and ‘other communities’, and how to encourage diversity/debate whilst maintaining some sort of order. You’ll come away with tips on how to successfully build community and maintain it throughout flame wars and other tribulations.

ResearcherID, Contributor ID, Scopus Author ID, etc. help to connect your scientific record. How do these tools connect to your online identity, and how can OpenID and other tools be integrated? How can we build an online reputation and when should we worry about our privacy?

Science Online London 2009: Author identity – Creating a new kind of reputation online from Joanna Wombat on Vimeo.

How can citizens be involved in doing and communicating science? We’ll take a look at practical examples from Galaxy Zoo, BioBlitz Bristol, and Wikipedia and discuss the obstacles and potential.

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Academic prestige, setting research trends, getting jobs and tenure, grant funding – they are largely based on publishing in high-Impact Factor journals and getting citations. Not only are these measures flawed and widely critized: "You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature", said Nobel laureate Paul Lauterbur. Citation measures are also subject to a considerable time-lag. If you write a paper today, it takes a year to get it published, and another year passes by until citations of it appear. What if there were alternative measures of scientific impact? What if these measures were available in real-time, letting you track the trends in your discipline as they develop? That's what we'll discuss in this session.

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web that will be released later this year. For this session we plan a live demo of the prerelease version of Google Wave to show off the potential for scientists.

This session will discuss future models for online science communication – but on a timescale well beyond the usual technology horizon. To judge the role of science communication in possible futures, we need to assess how research itself will be carried out in the future. In many scenarios online communication becomes the core enabling force – rather than a useful adjunct – and we can speculate as to the form that communication might best take.