Greg Simon, the President of FasterCures, has put together a list of Ten to watch in 2008 --for accelerating medical research and translating research into cures. Excerpt:
4. Science 2.0. Collaborative science is the name of the game these days, as science gets bigger and more multi-disciplinary and the data available for research grows explosively. The technological opportunity presented by the Semantic Web for networking data and researchers will be transformative. Watch the Neurocommons Project, a demonstration of the power of the Semantic Web approach based on open access information....
Update. Also see the response from Science Commons, which launched the Neurocommons project:
One of the most important reasons Science Commons exists is to help people find cures for disease faster. So we are delighted and honored to have made the FasterCures list of Ten to Watch in 2008 — recognizing “the top ten organizations, people, and ideas that are changing the face of biomedical research in 2008.” ...
In the simplest terms, [“Semantic Web” approach used at Neurocommons is] a way to mark research data so computers can help us make sense of it. The driving concept is that collaboration in science needs to make a shift from human-mediated to computer-mediated, from single-database access to data integration, from reading papers by people to reading papers with machines, and so on.
As part of the Neurocommons Project, we mark research that’s free to use — open access information — using the Semantic Web RDF language. This means that computers — not people — can sort through the data, giving researchers the ability to swiftly process much larger data sets. And that means that the research won’t simply be more accessible, it will also be easier to use — leading, we hope, to more (and faster) breakthroughs that benefit everyone.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/24/2008 04:37:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
