In the last 2 weeks everything has come together and convinced me that the old era of scholarly publishing is on the verge of collapse. The new ideas of web-based community, of freedom and democracy, and of semantics are irresistible. They’ve been bottled up by gateways, lawyers and an older generation who conforms and hangs onto the past rather than challenges.
That is finished. And I am playing a role in that – history will tell whether it mattered.
There is so much going on that I’ll simply list the last two weeks. Each item requires one or more blog posts. I haven’t had the time (and WordPress/server let me down). In order of date…
EuropePMC. We’re gearing up to showcase contributions from you. I’m certainly expecting that what I describe below will become available through EuPMC.
Panton Fellows. I visited one of our new Fellows, Rosie Graves, in Leicester. She’s going to show how citizens can take part in science (air quality). [Contact her]. I’m going to meet the others tonight. The Panton Fellows (Sophie Kershaw/Kay, Ross Mounce) are already changing the world.
Software Carpentry. This is massive. Greg Wilson (see video later) has run a revolutionary approach to creating software. People kill to get on the bootcamps – I was able to attend a wonderful one at Greenwich. Greg’s ideas of how to run things are applicable to many other new ventures including my own.
MozFest. Mozilla isn’t just a browser, it’s an organisation that is changing the world through building the web. The current web is stale, dominated by companies. Mozilla is creating a fresh approach which emphasizes democracy, meritocracy, citizens [and furry animals].
Shuttleworth Fellowship application. I then spent the week writing an application for a Shuttleworth Fellowship . It’s for “Anyone who has an innovative idea for social change through fresh thinking that adds value in the areas of knowledge, learning and technology. Anyone who has a clear vision of how the world can be a better place and the contribution they can make to bringing about the change.” I qualify. You have to make a VIDEO, here’s mine (the Content Mine https://vimeo.com/78353557 ). (BTW Shuttleworth WANT people to share their processes openly, and I’ll publish more).
The message is simple. There are hundreds of millions of critically important FACTS locked up in the STM literature. I now have the technology to liberate them from behind APIs, PDFs and other archaic forms of communication. I hope to liberate a 100 million facts a year. That’s not hyperbole – our group have already liberated millions of facts and the scale up is done through people and machines working together. Much More later.
And last night I heard I had been selected for a (skype) interview! I expect to blog this daily if I get any time…
NHSHack. Two days in Cambridge. Simply: the best hack I have been to. 80-100 committed people who want to make the NHS a better place for patients, GPs, hospitals. Within 2 days 14 groups (I lost count) had come up with wonderful applications. Not ideas, but ideas that work. Examples:
- PracticeMinder. Applying Hans Rosling’s wonderful GapMinder to evaluate doctor’s Practices (UK for surgery). [BTW Hans is on BBC tonight and do-not-miss him].
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LGBTQ analysis of Practices and Hospitals. Which are sensitive to these issues? Such a simple idea and so valuable.
- Where’s that clinician/registrar/xxx? A way of instance communication in hospitals through mobile devices.
It was so good I have kidnapped Helen Jackson to present to us at…
Spoton. A massive yearly gathering of anyone interested in science communication – blogging, journals, hacks, etc. Ross Mounce and I are running a 1-hour session on how to run a hack with Martin Fenner and Heln presenting. Follow us on #solo13hack. We’ll take questions for anywhere on the planet.
Open Access Button. Two medical students who are angry about paywalls and are doing something about it. They are running a Thunderclap which will hit the whole twittersphere with their message. I’ve donated my effort to help this. You can too. They need hackers for a week or two…
AMI/TheContentMine/XHTML2STM. Literally 1 hour ago I reached a state where I feel I can justify the claim:
“Machines can read the whole scientific literature and understand significant parts of it”.
The technology is there – the crawlers, the PDF parser, the graphic object synthesis, the creation of words, phrases in all areas of the “paper” including images.
We’re building the community. In Cambridge we have built intelligent readers for chemistry in the literature. In Bath we are building the same for biodiversity. Greg will put me in touch with astronomers…
Ross and I are off to discuss all this with BMC this afternoon.
The only thing standing in our way is the legacy scholarly publishers. What I/we are going to do is not illegal. Facts are not copyrightable. And very soon in UK we will be able to tear up the contractual clauses that forbid content mining.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Two thousand years ago and it’s still true: The times they are a changing.
You should change with them.