What Will Be The Impact of Future Changes in Digital

Scholarship on Marine Biodiversity?

Philip E. Bourne

University of California San Diego

pbourne@ucsd.edu

www.sdsc.edu/pb

http://www.slideshare.net/pebourne

You are the ones to answer that question – not me. I am here

simply to give you something to think about

My Perspective

• I am a domain scientist (computational molecular biology)

• I co-founded and am EIC of one Public Library of Science (PLoS) open access journals

• I co-founded a company, SciVee Inc., that is attempting to leverage the perceived changes in scholarly communication

• I support a small academic scholarly communication group

Scholarly Communication Group

• Can we improve the way science is disseminated and comprehended?

• Through openness can we increase the number of people interested in science?

Why Do We Need Change?

Here is a personal example from my own field

Josh Sommer – A Remarkable Young ManCo-founder & Executive Director the Chordoma Foundation

http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

Chordoma

• A rare form of brain cancer

• No known drugs• Treatment – surgical

resection followed by intense radiation therapy

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Chordoma.JPG

http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

Adapted: http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

Isaac

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants

Isaac Newton

From Josh’s point of view the climb up just takes too long

> 15 years and > $850M to be more precise

http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

http://sagecongress.org/Presentations/Sommer.pdf

http://fora.tv/2010/04/23/Sage_Commons_Josh_Sommer_Chordoma_Foundation

There Must Be Equally Compelling Examples from Your

Own Field?

To Sum Up This and More…

• Formal science communication:– Occurs too slowly – Reaches too few people– Costs too much– Ignores the data– Is very hard to reproduce

• Is stuck in the era of the printing press – we need to move Beyond the PDF and use the power of the medium

Committed to making the world’s

scientific and medical literature

a public resource

Open Access Can Begin to Address Some of These Issues

What is Open Access?

• A spectrum of things!

• An author pays model

• A different but apparently sustainable business model

• Free, relatively fast, online access

• Usage with less restrictions

Your Community is Already Engaged

A Couple of Examples of the Power of the Medium and What

Your Community Can Do

(apologies if it is being done already)

1. Broaden Scientific Awareness

• Identify areas of Wikipedia that relate to the journal that are missing or stubs

• Develop a Wikipedia page• Have a journal Topic Page

Editor review the page• Publish the copy of record

with associated rewards (CC-BY)

• Release the living version into Wikipedia

1. A link brings up figures from the paper

0. Full text of PLoS papers stored in a database

2. Clicking the paper figure retrievesdata from the PDB which is

analyzed

3. A composite view ofjournal and database

content results

2. Focus on Data-Journal Integration

1. User reads a paper (one view of the info)

2. Clicks on a figure which can be analyzed

3. Clicking the figure gives a composite database + journal view

4. This takes you to yet more papers or databases

4. The composite view haslinks to pertinent blocks

of literature text and back to the PDB

1.

2.

3.

4.

The Knowledge and Data Cycle

http://biolit.ucsd.edu

3. Use the Open Literature Looking for Low Hanging Fruit

Immunology Literature

Cardiac DiseaseLiterature

Shared Function

Products

ApplicationProduct Primary Customers

Journals PubCast Journals, publishers, societies

Meetings PosterCast Societies, conference orgs.SlideCast

Comm. PaperCast Societies, journalsPodcastSlideCast

Education PosterCast Societies, universitiesSlideCast

Books BookCast Publishers, book sellers

4. Accept Rich Media as Scholarship

Questions?

pbourne@ucsd.edu