I am only just entering the world of social networking in the sciences and learning my way (as we all are, really) around Science 2.0. Scientist Solutions is, to my way of thinking, an interesting example of the power of free.

Here’s how I discovered Scientist Solutions:

I help edit the free health sciences grants and scholarship listing service, ScanGrants. Periodically, I  Google the term “ScanGrants” in the hope of discovering that it has  been added to the database listings of yet another medical or academic  library, or office of research administration at a university somewhere.

While doing this one night, I came across a link to ScanGrants in Scientist Solutions. A member of Scientist Solutions had linked to “Request for Applications: Basic & Clinical Research in Autism,” which was a grant announcement I had found at the site of the foundation, Autism Speaks. I was pleased — here was an example of a scientist alerting his peers to a grant opportunity that I had myself found in much the same way — by surfing the Web and sharing what I found.

This is classic Web 2.0. That is to say, carrying on conversation and decentralized control of information flow. These technologies enable researchers who may not have access to expensive proprietary funding databases such as Community of Science to learn about grants. By spreading around news of funding opportunities, it also increases the likelihood that foundations will be able to draw upon a larger pool of qualified applicants.

With online communities, it is often difficult to determine who’s running the show. Case in point: the About Us details of Scientist Solutions are sketchy. There isn’t any in depth information on the management team. I had to do quite a bit of digging to determine (via a LinkedIn profile) that the president of Scientist Solutions is Joseph “Rusty” Bishop, that he is a research scientist at University of California, San Diego, that his goal is, “To facilitate communication between bench scientists and life science manufacturers to speed the process of scientific discovery” and that his specialty is, “… bridging entrepreneurship and bench science.” Given the impressive list of sponsors of Scientist Solutions, I would say he’s pretty good at that.

I wanted to see in what category the link to ScanGrants had been placed in. I found the category, Funding Available and was able to set up an email alert. Indeed, it was so easy that it was set up before I had fully decided to go that far. There is also good RSS functionality.

Joseph Bishop posted a rather useful item about a lifesciences grant from Corning. But when I tried to view details about Mr. Bishop, there was hardly any information. The same holds true with the other members of Scientist Solutions. Given that one driving aims of Science 2.0 is interconnectedness and social solidarity, the paucity of detail about each member is a problem. I have just popped over to Nature Network and was able to click on the picture of various bloggers and moderators and get very detailed profiles. For example, Maxine Clarke’s profile provides a good deal of information: “I am an editor at Nature, the scientific journal. I also run Nature Publishing Group’s authors’ and reviewers’ website, Nautilus (the blog for authors), Peer to Peer (the blog about peer review) and a Nature Network blog archiving my From the Blogosphere weekly column in Nature. I am one of the editors answering Network users’ questions on the Ask The Editor forum.”

There is potential with Scientist Solutions. Those in research administration and headhunters in pharma might be interested in a firm advertising on the funding page, NaviGRANT, whose website offers an inside look at the ferocious world of grants in the sciences and an intriguing look at the skullduggery and stealth and poaching that goes on in certain fields in need of the best and brightest.

It is interesting to compare Scientist Solutions with LabRoots.

LabRoots has a much slicker interface and to me, the key advantage of a slick screencast. Gotta have one of those! Scientists are busy people and social networking takes time rather than, in most instances, saving it. Screencasts can sell a potential user on a site.

The search engine on Scientist Solutions is mediocre and the site is pretty thin on many things the Web 2.0 generation expects: video clips, podcasts, etc. It is basically a discussion board and not terribly vibrant in that respect. For example, the funding page is posted to only sporadically and it is not easy to determine what fora topics there are. The audience seems most interested in the nuts and bolts of lab work, as opposed to the deep think pieces on the Nature Network.

But more power to entrepreneurs in Science 2.0. Anyone who can line up sponsors in this miserable economic climate as Mr. Bishop has done is one skillful guy. I was particularly impressed that within a few minutes of my comment on his post about the Corning lifescience grant I received a private message from him about my comment. That is a pretty impressive level of involvement from the head of site to a new user. It is heartening that there are entrepreneurs working to render science a real-time endeavor and not one mired in the antiquated world of science dominated by the timetables of tenure committees and academic publishers. Keep up the good work, Mr. Bishop.