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The “internet generation” (notice I’m using the label preferred by youth in the Harris survey) has grown up accessing content online for free — whether it’s actually free or they find free versions of content, music, etc. on peer-to-peer networks, find ways of getting around paywalls, etc. This is part of the reason the entire media business is in a state of upheaval, and as I mentioned in yesterday’s post on the AP report, traditional media are scrambling to invent new business models to support the distribution of all of this “free content.” While folks in the media business are sorting all of this out, younger people are “quietly” pushing to make another form of content free and open — scientific research. According to a really interesting article in The Boston Globe, there has been an ongoing movement towards openness and data/information sharing in the field of science. From the article:

Barry Canton, a 28-year-old biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is part of a peaceful insurgency in science that is beginning to pry open an endeavor that still communicates its cutting-edge discoveries in much the same way it has since Ben Franklin was experimenting with lightning. Papers are published in research journals after being reviewed by specialists to ensure that the methods and conclusions are sound, a process that can take many months.

“We’re a generation who expects all information is a Google search away,” Canton said. “Not only is it a Google search away, but it’s also released immediately. As soon as it happens, the video is up on YouTube and on all the blogs. The old model feels kind of crazy when you’re used to this instant information.”

The article goes on to list a ton of compelling reasons scientists shouldn’t want to open up (getting credit via journals, tenure, competition with other labs), yet despite all of this, “the counterculture scientific movement is gathering steam.”

I think this story embodies much of the current struggle around “the internet generation’s” expectation of instant information and the challenges this presents to traditional publishers — including the publishers of academic journals. Still it looks like a hybrid model is possible:

Canton, working in the relatively new field of synthetic biology, has seen the benefits firsthand. He and colleagues devised a bit of genetic material that could be inserted into a cell to let it communicate with other cells.

They posted their work online, but also submitted it to a journal over a year ago to be formally presented to the world’s scientific community. Meanwhile, their work was incorporated into 18 different projects by other labs. Canton was invited to workshops.

Last month, it came out in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

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Categorized under: Collegians

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