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Published online 24 June 2009 | Nature 459, 1050-1051 (2009) | doi:10.1038/4591050a
News Feature
Science journalism: Breaking the convention?
Blogs and Twitter are opening up meetings to those not actually there. Does that mean too much access to science in the raw, asks Geoff Brumfiel.
Last July, Lars Jensen carried a small shoulder bag of equipment into the atrium of the glass-and-steel conference centre in Toronto, Ontario. Jensen, a bioinformatician at the University of Copenhagen, was one of about 1,400 researchers at the annual Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology meeting.
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As an early adopter of twitter and friendfeed, I have attended conferences where Tweeting has been banned, yet within hours of the event closure, I have been able to find blog posts and tweets if you know where to look. My recommendation to other scientists, regardless of conference rules is to assume their content will be made public and double check their slides for sensitive content that will be subject to publication or patent applications in the near future. Best, Cisco (Twitter and Friendfeed @ciscogiii)
I think one small clarification is in place: "I could take pictures of every slide and it would be on the Internet within seconds" does not mean that I actually do so. In fact, to avoid the risk of violating copyright law, I only put photos of other people's slides online if I know them well enough to be certain that they will not mind, or if they have made explicit that you are allowed to do so, for example, by applying a Creative Commons license to their presentation.
This is a growing issue that isn't going to go away, and it's gratifying to see Nature tackling it full on. As a speaker, occasional live-Tweeter and avid reader of other people's on the spot accounts of meetings and events, I have found myself having to think through the complexities of what is appropriate and what is not here. Some of my early thoughts were posted at 2020science.org (http://2020science.org/2009/06/03/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/), prompted by Daniel MacArthur's experience. But I suspect that these will evolve as the use of social media in scientific circles continues to increase.
I also find it ironic that people go to conferences to present their work and at the same time want to keep their discoveries secret. On the other hand, if people abstain from presenting new results then why would anyone want to participate in conferences? In some fields, computer science comes to mind, the best work is published in conference proceedings. It is thus natural that ground-breaking work is presented at the conference in the proceedings of which the work is published. In other fields, biology is an example, conference papers are not highly regarded and everyone wants to publish their work in journals instead. This is the problem that conferences are now facing: if nobody wants to publish discoveries in conference proceedings, then the speakers are left with the choice either to present their old results from papers that most of the audience have already read, or to present unpublished results with the risk of harming their own chances of later getting an article published in a journal. In other words, I think the root of the problem is that researchers in natural sciences are largely evaluated by counting journal articles, not that conference participants use Twitter or FriendFeed.
Open science is potentially very positive, look at what MP's and the like have been hiding and the problems when that became public, however some research will always remain 'sensitive' and care in publicity is wise. I'd also point out that a growing number of UK Universities are surpressing comment, Academic Freedom is a wonderful concept but provides little protection when your employer adopts a draconian 'Electronic Communications Policy'. Blogging unless officially sanctioned is to be stopped, even using your own name in your own time away from work may lead to summary dismissal, on the whim of an I.T.C. 'service department' director without referance to H.R., if some of the documents being circulated are accepted by Universities Senate and Council. So grab your share of fame, or imfamy, now if you dare because you might not have that option for much longer!
Well...only mention things on the paper and not even a word for your own secrets. The presentation during conference is to make the attendees easier to get the points. The registration fee only gives the speakers such responsibility. On the other hand, as an audience, the registration fee gives you the opportunities to get your questions answered, to look for cooperators, and, most importantly, to get yourself more popular. For example, Posting notes on FriendFeeds will make you more notable especially when you drop a hyperlink to the outstanding notes for the talk on your won blog. The audiences of the audiences forms a big social network of knowledge sharing. At the beginning, it may look like breaking the conventions in terms of knowledge stealing. However, every social network requires contributions. The contribution comes from participation. The conferences are actually playing this game to make itself more notable. The more popular the conference, the higher impacts the speakers can gain. What is more, the journals will buy that papers from the conference will help them to gain reputations because blog notes and videos are not covering all the details published on the paper; especially, the supplementary materials. In short, it is just good business.
AFAIK one of the purposes of conferences is to allow presenters to update their work in view of information presented by other presenters and questions/comments from the audience. This means that what's published in the proceedings will likely be much more valuable than what was in the preliminary. Here, social networking can potentially add much value: people who are following the conference real-time can feed back comments/contributions via bloggers who are present, allowing each presentation to gain potential contributions from a much wider knowledge base. (I realize the technology and trust networks aren't in place yet, but the potential is certainly there.)