Review of my book: Information Today

by Katherine Allen; From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0. Posted on July 29, 2013.

 

“As a librarian in a large pharmaceutical company, Hervé Basset has a perspective both on drug manufacturers and consumers of scientific information. In this book he aims to explore the profound changes that are currently affecting science communication, and the impact that the life sciences industry is having on our society. He draws parallels between the worlds of ‘big pharma’ and ‘big STM publishing’, since both face radical challenges from internet enabled consumers, and both have reason to be wary of the risks posed by new ways of working and communicating. As Basset points out, the two worlds are closely intertwined: “pharma customers represent 20 per cent of big STM sales … Similarly, big pharma is strictly dependent on scientific publishing for the research process, for the update of researchers’ knowledge and for the publicity of their products.”

Read the full article at:

http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=91020

 

“From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0”: a nice review

Maceviciute E. (2013). Review of: Basset, Hervé, Stuart, David & Silber, Denise From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0 : Semantic search and social media in the pharmaceutical industry and STM publishing.. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2012. Information Research, 18(2), review no. R479 [Available at: http://informationr.net/ir/reviews/revs479.html%5D

Some extracts:

“First, I was surprised by the introduction, in which the similarities between commercial scholarly publishing and big pharmaceutical drug production were outlined. (…) . This was a perfect opportunity to find out what is happening at present.

Indeed, I could not have chosed a better source even if I was looking for it very deliberately. The book is about what it actually says in the sub-title: the present developments in how the pharmaceutical industry uses social media and semantic search and comparison of it with the situation in publishing in science, technology and medicine (STM). (…)

Thus, the changes in health behaviour with regard to the use of social media and the alternative movements in scholarly communication are explored to provide a wide social context for both industries and both technologies. Again a number of interesting parallels are discovered by the authors...

Secondly, I was impressed by the team of authors who worked on the book. Their knowledge of the subject and understanding of respective industries, the level of control of vast literature and information is very impressive. I would not call this a popular book as it concentrates on quite specific matters, but for those interested in these subjects it would be a useful source...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0: my interview (Market Intelligence Hub)

“We recently caught up with Hervé Basset, specialist librarian in the pharmaceutical industry and owner of the blog “Science Intelligence“, to talk about the inspiration behind his recent book  entitled “From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0″, published by Chandos Publishing and available on Amazon.”

Read the full article on http://digimind.com/blog/experts/pharma-3-0/

 

 

Pharma 3.0: “a monumental shift is happening” (E&Y)

“A monumental shift is happening that will impact the future of healthcare, according to an Ernst & Young report, which outlines a new approach to healthcare delivery, leading to the reinvention of commercial models within the pharmaceutical industry. (…)

The report, Progressions – The third place: Healthcare everywhere examines how several forces, including patent cliffs; reduced R&D productivity, pricing pressures, globalization and demographics have made the industry’s long-standing blockbuster business model increasingly outdated. These factors fueled a transition known as the move from Pharma 1.0, a vertically integrated blockbuster model to Pharma 2.0, which is the current model based on a more diversified market portfolios and a broader focus on bottom-line returns, not just top-line growth. The move to Pharma 3.0 won’t be automatic. (…)

“What we’re talking about at a very high level is a move to new healthcare system that is based on value and not volume,” (…)

Signs exist indicating that pharma companies are moving customer centricity (…)

Pharma 3.0 is also significant because it involves the transition from blockbuster drugs to more personalized medicine for smaller populations…

Read the full article:

Burns, Mia. Pharma moving toward more customer-centric models. MedAdNews-Pharmalive, online on February, 5th 2013. Available from:
http://blog.medadnews.com/index.php/2013/02/05/pharma-moving-toward-more-customer-centric-models/

For Pharma 3.0 models, read also:

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

 

 

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/

IFTTT: a wonderful tool to optimize your social presence

A review by Information Today Europe:

“IFTTT (also known as “If This Then That”) is a free web service accessible via www.ifttt.com. It allows users with an account to connect over 50 online and messaging services (channels) and automatically feed information and data between those channels. It can be an extremely useful tool for:

• Drawing information together from a variety of resources
• Sharing information across different networks
• Managing information flows
• Extending your reach and spreading your message
• Backing up and archiving information and files
• Creating timely alerts
• Doing this all as quickly and easily as possible and in one place

Broadly speaking many of the channels can be broken down the following types (examples given):

• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Bookmarking sites (Delicious, Pinboard)
• Image sharing sites (Flickr, Instagram)
• Blogging services (Blogger, WordPress)
• Video and audio sharing websites (Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud)
• File storage services (Dropbox, Google Drive)
• Document collaboration services (Google Drive, Evernote)
• RSS feeds
• Email and messaging services (Gmail, SMS)“

Read more on:

Green, Gary. Using IFTTT to connect and spread your message. Info Today Europe, online on December 21, 2012. Available from:
http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Using-IFTTT-to-connect-and-spread-your-message-86875.aspx

Open Access and pseudo-science journals

Unfortunately, there is a negative effect of the widely success of the Open Access movement, the emergence of pseudo journals.

Jeffrey Beall maintains a list of these predatory publishers that ” exist only to make money off the author processing charges that are billed to authors upon acceptance of their scientific manuscripts“…

This list is available on:
http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

Open access could prevent rejection of good science

Steve Miron, from Wiley, interviewed by Sian Harris:

What role does open access play in research publishing?

It’s clear that open access (OA) is becoming a big trend. However, I see that for the foreseeable future we’ll live in a mixed economy with green OA, gold OA, subscription and approaches that have not been invented yet. It is fun and exciting, with many experiments by publishers. (…)

There has been some great communication between the research community, publishers and policy makers in developing OA policy. It has been done in an enlightened, positive way but I think there’ll be some serious issues that still need to be considered. (…)

How might relationships between researchers and publishers be improved?

We work hard to nurture and maintain a positive relationship with researchers and libraries. No relationship is without some tension or disagreement but we do actively listen to authors, whether what they say is positive or negative.

(…)

We get around 450,000 article submissions a year and publish about a third of them. Some good science is not being published because the materials budgets do not keep pace with R&D spend. I hope as funded OA becomes more part of the scholarly landscape these tensions are addressed and that budgets for publications will be more aligned with the R&D spend.

http://www.researchinformation.info/features/feature.php?feature_id=393

PLOS: ten years and a new look

Announcement from the reputed PLOS:

On the eve of our tenth anniversary, we’re pleased to announce that the redesign of all PLOS journals is now live. The three goals of this initiative were to:

• Ensure that readers can quickly assess the relevance and importance of an article through a figure browser and highly visible Article-Level Metrics
• Improve site navigation to help users discover content more easily
• Launch a flexible platform from which to build out future innovations

This refresh offers users more effective ways to access and read content, updates the overall appearance of the sites and harmonizes them with our new PLOS look announced earlier this year.

Read further on:

http://www.plos.org/redesigned-plos-journals-now-launched/