Blog-based research notebook
Today I have recieved a quite surprising email alert from Applied Surface Science. In this issue the proceedings of the “Third Japan-US Workshop on Combinatorial Material Science and Technology” are collected. I have browsed the titles as usual. The headline of the very last article has been as follows:
“Blog-based research notebook: Personal informatics workbench for high-throughput experimentation”
I did not expect this being published in a journal dealing with Surface Science, but as ChemPort.net runs with a weblog software, named WordPress, and as I am one of the editors of scienceport.org and a founder of WordPress.de, I was really pleased to read this headline and curious about its content.
[ In this age of information technology, many researchers are still conservative in keeping a log of their activities in paper-based notebooks. This style of log-keeping brings about the situation that our experimental data and their descriptions are recorded separately into hard disks and papers, respectively. Such a data separation is likely to be a serious rate-limiting factor in high-throughput experimentation from the view point of getting feedback on each researcher’s work from what he has done. We propose to utilize a blog (Weblog) as an electronic research notebook and discuss technical requirements for maintaining it, on the basis of the blogging experience for 4 years by one of the authors…]
Authors: Shin-ichi Todoroki, Tomoya Konishi and Satoru Inoue.
I have read the article and I mainly agree with the authors, but in my opinion one should not forget the communication skills weblogs could serve to the various scientific communities if they represent both: logbook for scientists sharing and saving their descriptions of measurements and issues for public in order to discuss, share and save knowledge.
BTW: If you like to share your knowledge, I recommend to visit wikipedia.org.
Januar 29th, 2006 12:28
Guten Tag!
I’m glad to find your comment on my paper. You’re the second
blogger I’ve found. I think European people are very sensitive to
such a topic.
One year has passed since I gave that talk, in Japan and the United
States. I was very surprised at the fact that quite a few audience
did not know blog at that time. Now, it’s your turn to say that many
researchers, including me;-) are still conservative. I hope your
activities are going to ride a crest.
Tuchu:ss!
Januar 29th, 2006 13:15
Konnichiwa
Many thanks for your response and for writing this article. I`m the second blogger who comments to your paper, really? Where can I find the other one?
I totally agree with you that many researchers are conservative, but I hope that the next generation thinks different. The WorldWideWeb is still relatively young and tools like weblogs will find their way to the scientific community. It takes time, but as you see the change has already begun.
Let`s spread weblogs.
Sayoonara!