The principle format of science communication - the research article - hasn’t changed for a very long time. But research as well as the processing and communication of data have all changed dramatically. Therefore, is the traditional way of publishing still the best way to share scientific results and discoveries?
This is a question Emmy Tsang is focusing on at eLife Sciences, a non-profit organisation created by funders and researchers. Following her Ph.D. years in neuroscience, Emmy decided it is time to bring some badly needed change to science and research communication. With so much research based on software and with modern technologies we have available today, we should be able to make science and the sharing of results fairer, more open and faster.
So, what will the future of scientific communication be? Will it be something like the executable research article? Will research articles be replaced with publishing individual ‘units of research’, e.g. methodologies, results etc.? Whatever the outcome, research software will play a central part in it. And, as Emmy says, change will only happen if we work together as a community.
If you have ideas and suggestions Emmy would like you to get in touch via @eLifeInnovation or email.
Some of the links mentioned in this episode:
- stencila using open source tools to author and share executable documents
- Code Check by Stephen Eglen and Daniel Nüst to have your research code checked independently
- Binder which helps to turn Jupyter notebook repositories into executable environments
- Hypergraph share your research as you go
- Real Time collaboration with JupyterLab
- Africa arXiv
- Goolge Search why leaving your search for papers to Google may not be a good idea