Quote: “Blogging is existing, tweeting is connecting”

Interesting findings given by several French students, about the power of blogging for young scientists:

“

• The transmission of knowledge is a difficult task. You need to multiply the initiatives, and that’s where the blog plays an important role
• PhD candidates have little free time, but it is probably the period in their careers when they have the most time to spend “informing the public
• blogging is about sharing findings, sharing your work, and creating a digital e-reputation
• Blogging also means improving one’s writing skills, editing speed, and scientific analysis, which are all valuable abilities when it comes to writing your thesis
• If you write and publish online, make it so that you’ll be read. Post your articles on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. E-mail your texts to people likely to read them.

Read the full article from:

Science Blogs and Your PhD. A trump card for your scientific career; Available from: http://www.knowtex.com/nav/science-blogs-and-your-phd-a-trump-card-for-your-scientific-career_40002

Information obesity and doctors

“one study found that a primary care physician would have to read 341 relevant medical journals and 7,287 monthly articles, equaling more than 627 reading hours per month, just to stay current on all medical literature. But who has time when you’re treating patients?“

 http://catalyst.phrma.org/communications-breakdowns-in-the-scientific-community-and-how-to-fix-them/

5 reasons why you should buy “From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0″

 

1. You’ve ever wanted to know what “science 2.0″ means
2. You don’t know what is a “citizen scientist”
3. You’ve never heard about the “Big STM”
4. You’re more than confused with all these web 3.0, Science 3.0, Pharma 3.0, etc.
5. And, at last, in December, Chandos is offering various discount (20% off) and some free shipping. See http://www.facebook.com/ChandosPublishing

 

 

From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0

Available at Chandos: http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=2767&ChandosTitle=1

and on Amazon bookstore: http://www.amazon.com/Science-2-0-Pharma-3-0-Pharmaceutical/dp/1843347091/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355255814&sr=1-1&keywords=basset+chandos

Altmetrics: a new impact factor for new publishings

In the latest issue of Research Information, David Stuart is wondering how researchers now can evaluate the impact of these new ways of publishing, including social channels.

One of the answer is Altmetrics, the growing application that you will find now in every science journals and databases (like Scopus for e.g.) and which measures popularity of an article on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Use of this way to measure the research performance is still controversial (but still is Impact Factor 50 years after its beginning!) and “there is a long way to go before altmetrics fully answer any of the questions that are being raised by the new research environment“, says David.

However, altmetrics fast adoption shows that “research landscape is much more than journal articles, and there is a lot of value to be created by measuring the connections between the new types of publication“.

Stuart, David. Making metrics more relevant. Research Information, Dec. 2012/ Jan 2013. pp.13-16. available from: http://content.yudu.com/A1zwzg/RIDEC12JAN13/resources/13.htm

Open Access: still in progress (Research Information)

2 articles in the latest issue of Research Information show that OA is still growing but also needs to improve some processes.

Some findings from a survey made by Wiley:

• 79 % of surveyed authors see open access as more prevalent in their discipline than it was three years ago
• Reasons that authors gave for not yet having published under an open-access model included a lack of high profile open-access journals (48 per cent), lack of funding (44 per cent) and concerns about quality (34 per cent). Authors said they would publish in an open-access journal if it had a high impact factor, if it were well regarded and if it had a rigorous peer-review process.
• The highest proportion of open-access authors came from a medical background (28 per cent), closely followed by biological sciences (24 per cent)

and a discussion around the new model of publication, the CC-BY license:

The CC-BY licence condition, defined by Creative Commons, allows modification and reuse of content, including commercially, provided that the original author is properly attributed. (…) However, there are concerns with the implications of the licence. Because CC-BY allows for commercial reuse of content it could theoretically be published again, behind a paywall, which might seem to contradict some of the aims of open access. And there may be some uses that researchers are uncomfortable with. For example, medical researchers might be unhappy with parts of their papers being used to promote a particular drug…

 

OA gains ground with authors, says study. Research Information, 30 october 2012. Available from: http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1041

More publishers move towards CC-BY licence for OA articles. Research Information, 15 november 2012. Available from: http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1047

Science article: post it on Twitter to be downloaded and cited!

A recent study has shown a “strong tie between social media interest, article downloads, and even early citations. (…)

Authors  ”also find that volume of Twitter mention is statistically correlated with that of both downloads and “early” citations“

Shuai X, Pepe A, Bollen J (2012) How the Scientific Community Reacts to Newly Submitted Preprints: Article Downloads, Twitter Mentions, and Citations. PLoS ONE 7(11): e47523

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0047523

 

Social Health Activists distrust Big Pharma

According a recent study, patient communities have a negative view of social efforts by the pharma industry:

“The increasingly important use of social media by the pharmaceutical industry is not only controversial, but hard to gauge. Although anxious about regulatory scrutiny, drugmakers are trying to reach more patients all the time. But the results are, not surprisingly, spotty. A recent survey found that 47 percent of so-called health activists – people who regularly participate in online health communities – have a negative view of pharma. (…)

We have “heard a consistent refrain: communities want companies to contribute critical information – and to help correct misinformation – in social media. (…)

The article says also that pharma companies remain skepticals about the real social media impact:

• More than 80 percent of 61 drug and device makers, healthcare agencies, technology companies and so-called thoughts leaders believe the lack of guidance from the agency has limited the ability to attempt innovative programs in social media. In fact, almost half of respondents say the legal and regulatory risks of using social medica (dixit) outweigh the benefits of participation
• The median budget allocation to digital, out of the total marketing budget, this year is 15 percent, with a 20 percent median expected in 2013. The biggest budget increase is expected for content for tablets and smartphones, and social media initiatives for consumers
• drug and device makers are more optimistic about mobile than social media

Silverman, Ed. Which Social Media groups distrust Pharma? Pharmalot, 6th of November 2012. Available from: http://www.pharmalot.com/2012/11/which-social-media-groups-distrust-pharma/

To read: Open Innovation, Social network and advances in Drug discovery

Extract of a recent good review:

“Social networking is beginning to make an impact on the drug discovery process. A convergence of different commercial and publicly accessible chemical informatics, databases and social networking tools is positioned to change the way that scientific and medical collaborations are initiated, maintained and expanded, particularly in the realm of complex, rare and orphan diseases . A community-based platform that combines traditional drug discovery informatics with Web 2.0 platforms and strong privacy is believed to be the key to facilitate richer and instantaneous collaborations involving health care professionals with the same interests.  This way data from differential diagnosis, experiments and new drugs being tested are archived, mined and then selectively shared between colleagues in the Internet with standardized formats.

New drugs are subject to exhaustive crucial scrutiny, yet there has never been a corresponding effort to collect reports of drugs delivering unexpected benefits. If open innovation can lead to the creation of the world’s most complete encyclopedia such as Wikipedia, that same approach could be used to capture the exceptional untapped value associated with existing drugs, and to power the discovery of important new medicines. In the Facebook and Google era, there might be a better, more efficient and systematic way of harnessing this communal wisdom for drug discovery.  (…)

In light of these initiatives, large pharmaceutical organizations are in the process of transitioning from a fully integrated pharmaceutical company to fully integrated pharmaceutical networks with a social networking component connecting members with similar interests as well as project tracking and planning.

Academic and private sectors need user-friendly and efficient tools for information exchange and to share data points from patients. Pharmaceutical companies have interdepartmental databases of patients and samples for research, clinical trials and for patient follow-up, but there is no communication between these databases, even within databases housed in the same company [Social Media in Science and Medicine: http://www.laboratory-journal.com/science/information-technology-it/social-media-science-and-medicine%5D. To date, there are no social networks in the market that offers useful solutions for science and medicine in the clinical genetics field [Social Media in Science and Medicine: http://www.laboratory-journal.com/science/information-technology-it/social-media-science-and-medicine%5D. It is paramount for physicians to have reliable tools that will facilitate diagnosis and identify better treatments for diseases. (…)

As in the medical field, there is an increasing need for solutions in the scientific field for networking and communication between professionals with common interests. ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Mendeley are already providing some tools to achieve this goal but more specialized open-source media tools are needed in science and medicine. Despite existing competition in science, the best way for science to have a major impact in society and change the way we approach diseases is through collaboration and networking. In the end, the outcome will be the development of better drugs and faster translation of basic science to the patient’s bedside”.

Fabricio F. Costa. Social networks, web-based tools and diseases: implications for biomedical research. Drug Discovery Today, Available online 23 October 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2012.10.006

Young scientists: social media to boots your career

New channels for your science communication :

These nice advises are especially addressed to young scientists
Social media for your career: http://www.biggerbrains.com/dissemination

Personal branding: your own website http://www.biggerbrains.com/creating-a-simple-and-effective-academic-personal-website

Blogs and Twitter: http://www.biggerbrains.com/the-value-and-how-tos-of-blogging-and-microblogging-for-disseminating-your-research

How to “google” your article? http://www.biggerbrains.com/optimize-your-article-for-SEO