COLLABORATION USING OPEN NOTEBOOK SCIENCE IN ACADEMIA - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 427

25.2 OPEN NOTEBOOK SCIENCE

The term open notebook science (ONS) was introduced in 2006 to enable an
unambiguous discussion of open collaboration in science [1, 2]. The term open
science is too broad and nebulous while open - source science has been used
inconsistently, sometimes referring to open-source software in science. ONS
specifi cally refers to the public sharing of the entirety of one's laboratory
notebook, including all associated raw data fi les. The default assumption is that
all experiments from a project are shared in near real time. This allows others
to contribute quickly since it can be assumed that, if an experiment is not
reported, it has not yet been done [3]. Forms of partial ONS, where there is
either a signifi cant delay or selective sharing, can be made explicit by the use
of logos [4].
There are some interesting consequences to ONS with respect to collabora-
tion. Since the entire content is shared, not only do others know what has been
done in a lab, they can also infer what has not yet been attempted. Potential
collaborators can then confi dently carry out needed experiments without wor-
rying that they are unnecessarily duplicating work. If they choose to replicate
an experiment, then they can do so with the prior knowledge of what hap-
pened in all previous attempts.

25.3 U SEFUL C HEM PROJECT

25.3.1 Platforms

The UsefulChem project was initiated in the Bradley laboratory at Drexel
University in the summer of 2005. The concept was to discover and work on
urgent problems in chemistry and report on the progress of the project in a
transparent way. The project started with the UsefulChem blog on the free
and hosted Blogger service provided by Google [5]. A wiki [6] was later estab-
lished to organize collective information by linking to relevant blog posts or
other resources. Wikispaces was chosen as the platform for this purpose
because it provided a free hosted service for public wikis and afforded an
intuitive visual editor, simplifi ed wikitext, and convenient back-up and alerting
capabilities [7] .
This model of providing specialized services for free as long as data remain
open has been widely exploited for diverse applications on the Web. For
example, on Wikispaces, only private accounts require payment. This is a mutu-
ally benefi cial situation for the client who enjoys free services and for the
service provider, where the public accounts provide free examples and testi-
monials which can serve as a form of advertising for the pay services. Many
of these services also monetize the free versions by displaying ads. The fi rst
laboratory experiments were recorded on a new blog—UsefulChem
Experiments [8, 9]—and information about relevant molecules was collected