Significant Science

Attention everyone who cares about scientific research in general and Open Science in particular. I have just learned about what is being billed as the First Ever Open Science Summit (kind of presumptuous that given that ScienceOnline has been going strong for several years and Open Science is often discussed there  and there have been all kinds of other meetings at which Open Science has been discussed) will take place July 29- 31, 2010 in Berkeley, California.  Check out their Twitter feed here.

I was a bit put off at first by the homepage of the conference Web site,  which features a rather grandiose essay about “paradigm shattering conceptual shifts” and throws around the names of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Galileo and so forth.  Open Science is indeed one of the most important developments we shall see in science in our lifetimes, but could we please refrain from flights of rhetorical fancy and stick to the matter-of-factness of one its leading practitioners, Jean-Claude Bradley who writes, “The Open Science movement – at least as far as it is reflected by the people I know – does not seem to be driven by zealots or idealists trying to get everyone to drink the cool-aid. It is just a bunch of people who see opportunities to do things in better ways as new tools become available – and they can’t find a credible reason not to do them.”

Hype aside, the  Open Science Summit 2010 sounds like a fascinating, important gathering. Just reading the topics to be addressed is edifying and kudos to the organizers for bringing together many of the leading lights in the Open Science movement.

I have heard many of the speakers before and can attest to their ability to engage audiences be they basic scientists or health sciences librarians. I could listen to Victoria Stodden all day, for instance. She is to speak on the Reproducible Research Standard. Her paper Enabling Reproducible Research: Open Licensing for Scientific Innovation is a seminal piece of scholarship in scholarly communication and the information sciences and can be downloaded here.

There is to be a session on the State of Open Data/Open Access Journals that will include such key figures in Open Science as the aforementioned Jean Claude Bradley as well as the indispensable man of Open Science Cameron Neylon and one of his co-founders of the Panton Principles, Peter Murray-Rust.

Stodden will participate in the panel Epistemology 2.0: Reputation Engines, Peer Review, and the Future of Online Science along with such figures as Jason Hoyt of Mendeley Research Networks (who was one of the panelists on an interesting session at ScienceOnline2010 on online reference managers) and the thought leader Michael Nielsen.

And Lisa Green of Science Commons/Creative Commons (with whom I worked on the Science Commons Symposium-Pacific Northwest) will participate in a panel discussion on Applied Examples/Patent Pools.

These are all the usual suspects of the Open Science movement and of online science in general. What makes the Open Science Summit 2010 stand apart is its quite impressive mix of movers and shakers from academia, industry, science journalism and the world of foundations and disease advocacy organizations. Check out the roster of academicians, technologists, entrepreneurs, scientists, journalists, federal officials and representatives of international organizations, philanthropists and patient advocates.

How very heartening, for instance, it is that the rare disease movement is starting to engage at an ever accelerating pace with that of Open Science. I am very excited, for instance, to have been granted the privilege of participating in a panel discussion on Open Science at the Annual meeting of the Genetic Alliance in a few weeks:

Groups like the Genetic Alliance are incredibly effective in getting things done at the national level vis-à-vis legislation that advances medical research and kudos to both it and to the organizers of Open Science Summit 2010 for facilitating networking among disease advocacy groups and the scientists they fund and foster.

Open Science Summit 2010 looks like a killer conference. The subject matter is fascinating. The speakers are stellar—people of real accomplishment who are effecting change in substantial, substantive concrete ways. I have just lost someone I loved very much to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. When I think about her and how she devoted her professional life to helping front line providers obtain the information they needed to assist patients, I am ever more grateful for the work that those in Open Science such as the presenters of Open Science Summit 2010 do to render scientific processes ever more efficient so that librarians can do their jobs better and that kind gentle people are not cut down too early in life by devastating illnesses.