SOLO11: Science online London 2011 (#solo11) - day 1, panel 2 - "What's in it for us?"

Panel #2: Incentives - "What's in it for us?"

After the morning session (see SOLO11: Science online London 2011 (#solo11) - day 1, morning panel, the arsenic story) I had great hopes for this panel as I thought it was really going to tackle the issues surrounding what is in it for scientists to engage and contribute with science online.

The session was described as:

"How can / should we reward best practices and behaviour in online research and communication? What are the levers to push to answer the "what's in it for me" question at the bench and also in the blogging community? This panel will pull together a diverse array of opinions from both commercial and non-profit stakeholders, funders and researchers to look at the social issue surrounding how people behave and engage in online science environments.

Moderated by Cameron Neylon, STFC, Science in the Open

Panelists:

Jeremy Frey - Professor of Physical Chemistry, University of Southampton
Giles Carden - Director, Management Information and Planning, University of Warwick
Mari Williams - Head of Evaluation and Policy Unity, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Nick Barnes - Climate Code Foundation"

However, the panel discussion really didn't live up to my hopes as it got bogged down in the old and tired subjects of peer-review in the context of scientific publication and grant applications.

What's in it for us?

Jeremy discussed the problems of handing data, and making it available, and how this activity was not really valued in terms of promotion and recognition. In addition, Jeremy argued that the annual appraisal system used in most UK universities now was actually making this situation worse as there was no mechanism in place for recognising non-traditional output as an academic outcome. This was a promising start.

Giles then raised the 'compliance problem' in that you have to measure output, and how this tends to favour traditional forms of output, e.g. papers, books, as opposed to non-traditional output such as blogs and online engagement. Giles then went on to suggest that the problem may lie with the scientists that are seeking change in that they are not being successfully in getting the framework used to measure output changed. To this argument Cameron added that researchers blames the managers, and the managers blame researchers. All-in-all, not very constructive and quite circular argument. We were really no further forward.

During the panel Mari (BBSRC) pointed out that in the current round of funding constraints, and cuts (even though the research councils in the UK did relatively OK in the recent government spending review) we need to be mindful that if we are investing in research then we may not be spending money on, for example, care of the elderly. There is the old question of: 'What are we getting?", where we equals the funding councils and the general public. Mari did state that the BBSRC has been looking at outputs, outcomes, and impact, but then completely failed to address, as did the rest of the panel, the issue of what these outputs, outcomes, and impact were, and how they would be measured, which, I thought, was the theme of the discussion!

Peter Murray-Rust, during the question session, raised the interesting point that a lot of researchers (certainly in the UK) seem to be their own worst enemy in that they routinely fail to cite from where funding came to support their research.

Summary

In my opinion, the panel completely failed to address their central theme of "What's in it for us?" in what I am rapidly coming to view as the post-'scientific paper' era (I wish I could come up withe a better term for that... Please feel free to suggest one below.). There was no real discussion of how to measure what is being dubbed 'non-traditional output' and from what Mari said it would appear that the BBSRC is not even considering looking at it as part of their measure of outputs, outcomes, and impact.

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SOLO11: Science online London 2011 (#solo11) - day 1, panel 2 - "What's in it for us?"

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