[sc-announce] Knowledge wants to be connected -- Science Commons blog
Donna Wentworth
dwentworth at creativecommons.org
Sun Oct 5 11:32:09 EDT 2008
Knowledge wants to be connected
October 5th, 2008<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/10/05/knowledge-wants-to-be-connected/>by
dwentworth
That was the core message of a speech by Science Commons' John
Wilbanks<http://creativecommons.org/about/people/#34>at the Open
Access and Research Conference 2008 <http://www.oar2008.qut.edu.au/> a few
weeks ago in Brisbane, Australia. The conference was an opportunity both to
celebrate Australia's burgeoning
leadership<http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/25/2374371.htm>in
harnessing open approaches for advancing science and scholarship, and
to
talk about where the global open
access<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/overview.htm>(OA) movement
is headed.
Here's an excerpt from an article by the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation's Anna
Sellah<http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/anna_salleh__abc_science_online>on
the speech, which provides a succinct summary of the reasons why open
approaches are vital for deriving value from the vast amounts of scientific
data being produced:
"The value of any individual piece of knowledge is about the value of any
individual piece of lego," Wilbanks said in a keynote address to the Open
Access and Research Conference <http://www.oar2008.qut.edu.au/> held in
Brisbane last week.
"It's not that much until you put it together with other legos."
He says the ability to connect knowledge brings scientific revolutions. For
example Watson and Crick's breakthrough on the structure of DNA involved
them reading all the scientific papers on nucleotide bonding and encoding it
in the form of a physical model, says Wilbanks.
But this kind of "human scale" analysis is no longer feasible in an age when
automated laboratory processes generate vast amounts of information faster
than the human mind can process it.
"For example, we have 45,000 papers about one protein or one gene," says
Wilbanks.
He says a scientist might once have analysed the impact of one drug on one
gene, but now pipetting robots are capable of analysing 25,000 genes at a
time.
"Most of the research says the smartest of us can handle five or six
independent variables at once - not 25,000," he says
You can read the full piece at the ABC
website<http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/03/2380624.htm>
.
Those of you following news of the conference and developments in Australia
may also be interested in Open
Oz<http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-oz.html>and
Doing
things with data<http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/10/doing-things-with-data.html>,
two posts by OA
leader<http://poynder.blogspot.com/2008/01/open-access-interviews-dr-alma-swan.html>Dr.
Alma
Swan <http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/aboutus/aswan.html>, who was also a
keynote speaker at the event.
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