Next Generation Science

As 2009 comes to a close, I would like to thank you for your readership. Just shy of one year ago, NGS launched with the goal of examining emerging technologies — including Web 2.0 — and their impact on the scientific method, researchers and the general public. Our aim was to explore The Future of Science and to create a space to discuss Science 2.0: the use of blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, folksonomies (tagging), RSS, podcasts and other approaches to participate in conversation and information flow as it pertains to science. We believe these technologies are particularly important as research moves online and becomes connected, since scientists rely on communication and information flow to share and advance knowledge.

Next Generation Science consists of two web sites:

• The Next Generation Science blog (a.k.a. NGS)
• The Next Generation Science Registry

Each site has a different purpose. Here at NGS, we focus on emerging technologies and tomorrow’s science (if you’re interested in contributing, please let us know). Just last week, we introduced the NGS FriendFeed Sciencebot, which will post weekly updates on science-related FriendFeed posts that are particularly interesting; watch for the topic FriendFeed Science Focus. Together with our quasi-monthly Science Spotlight series, we hope to disseminate interesting and useful science resources beyond what is authored here on NGS. Lastly, the Next Generation Science Registry is a digital compendium of science and technology resources.

There are several ways to connect with Next Generation Science, including email or RSS feed, Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook. If you have an internet-enabled cell phone, Next Generation Science can also be accessed via the mobile web.

Most popular articles for 2009

We’ve calculated the most popular articles for 2009 using two measures, either by the highest number of page views for the year (shown in blue) or by the average number of page views (shown in white and calculated as the number of page views/number of days posted).

Top 6 articles by page view

1. Science Spotlight – March 24th, 2009
   (article #16, 6,073 page views)
2. The Open Laboratory: Interview with Bora Zivkovic
   (article #32; 3,398 page views)
3. GoPubMed: Interview with Michael Alvers
   (article #24; 3,279 page views)
4. Content Intelligence: The Future of Search
   (article #19; 3,046 page views)
5. Connotea: Saving References Made Simple
   (article #14; 2,371 page views)
6. ResearchBlogging.org: Interview with Dave Munger
   (article #3; 2,095 page views)

Top 10 articles by average page views/day

1. Focusing on Science via FriendFeed
   (article #63; average: 65 page views/day)
2. BioKM: Cloud-based Research Knowledge Management
   (article #58; average: 34 page views/day)
3. The End of Impact Factors as a Measure of Research Quality
   (article #51; average: 26 page views/day)
4. FriendFeed Science Focus: this week
   (article #64; average: 22 page views/day)
5. Science Spotlight – March 24th, 2009
   (article #16; average: 22 page views/day)
6. The Open Laboratory: Interview with Bora Zivkovic
   (article #32; average: 21 page views/day)
7. Open Source Science Commons
   (article #49; average: 19 page views/day)
8. 2009 Top 10 Innovations in the Life Sciences
   (article #59; average: 16 page views/day)
9. GoPubMed: Interview with Michael Alvers
   (article #24; average: 14 page views/day)
10. ALSUntangled: Interview with Richard Bedlack
    (article #45; average: 14 page views/day)

Thanks for reading and all the best in the coming year!

My social network on FriendFeed (user: wjjessen) has a clear science focus, which I find especially useful for reading about open access, all types of science resources and the latest science news & research. In particular, the aggregation of scientists in the FriendFeed rooms The Life Scientists and Science 2.0 constantly provide and discuss a plethora of valuable resources and information I haven’t found in other online social networks.

I thought it would be useful to link to those FriendFeed posts that were particularly interesting here on NGS, not only to serve as an external archive but also to help disseminate the links, resources and discussions. To that end, I’ve modified Bob Hitching’s plugin Fresh From FriendFeed and Twitter to regularly check for science posts that myself and others have “liked” and link to them from NGS. I’m still tweaking the hacks, but it appears to be working as I intended (we’ll see what happens this week with multiple posts).

The NGS FriendFeed Sciencebot will post weekly updates on science under the topic FriendFeed Science Focus.

UPDATE: January 8th, 2010 I think I’ve worked out the URL bug. Instead of simply numbering posts, each post title and URL will have a unique date stamp based on the week number.

Last month, Hope started her own blog to showcase science. She’s now writing full time over at Significant Science, where she will discuss interesting, significant developments in science and medicine, as well as articles and interviews on topics such as Science 2.0, Medicine 2.0, Health 2.0, Open Science, the e-patient movement and participatory medicine.

We wish Hope the best on her new venture!