Scitable: a social network for scientists and scholars

Who said social networks were only good for socializing? 

Scitable.com is giving the often nebulous concept of social media a purpose by building an online community around scientific learning and knowledge exchange.

Scitable was launched by the 140-year-old Nature Publishing Group, whose flagship journal Nature is among the best-known peer-reviewed science publications. The site says its social network membership numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and it's clear from paging through the members that it has attracted young scientists from across the planet.

Students and teachers can exchange information, ask each other questions, and read through various peer-reviewed articles on different topics.  The site, still new, is heavily oriented toward genetics -- a discipline the site's creators chose for its renewed interest after the election of President Obama, who lifted the Bush-era ban on stem cell research.

A few science-oriented social platforms have popped up with names like Labmeeting.com, SciVee.tv, and Nature Network, another Nature-led community for professional scientists. 

Scitable is rather less flashy than leading social communities like Facebook and Twitter. Its static, Web 2.0 feel might be a point for improvement, especially if it's hoping to capture the interest of a younger generation of students used to video, slideshows and real-time messaging. 

Still, Scitable is an incarnation of what a connected world will do for science, study and eduction -- that is, bring both the world's information and its minds to within a few clicks of each other.

-- David Sarno

Comments

[Mary Canady]

Nice post! While there are several of these types of social networks for science, it is unclear whether any will 'take hold.' I manage the San Diego Biotechnology Network (http://sdbn.org), where we've chosen to connect scientists via existing applications such as LinkedIn and Facebook, lowering the barrier to entry. We also combine traditional face to face networking, which we find to help greatly in solidifying relationships. We feel as though this 'regional social media' is very powerful, especially considering that scientists can combine their expertise and technologies, ultimately resulting in more innovation.

Mary Canady

[junor]

Nice Post...even twitter and facebook become more familiar than other sosial network specially for science, those social network not automatically made a good effect for young generation..:D

[Alan Marnett]

Thanks for covering this topic! It’s encouraging to see mainstream publications like the LA Times devote attention to envisioning “what a connected world will do for science”. Over the next five to ten years, the implementation of internet-based tools will radically change the way science operates as an industry. I am a third generation chemist who recently left my postdoc at MIT to support scientists lives both in and out of the lab via a new web resource called BenchFly http://www.benchfly.com. We provide a platform for researchers to share videos of scientific tips, tricks and techniques- essentially creating the same demonstration-based learning model we use everyday in the lab - just now on the Internet. By bringing expert instruction to any scientist worldwide with an internet connection we hope to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, foster the viability of science as a career and truly “bring both the world's information and its minds to within a few clicks of each other”.

[Mr. Gunn]

I agree with Mary. If you look at the successful examples of social networks, the actual networking has arisen as an emergent property of people gathering to exchange a certain kind of information - LinkedIn for CVs, Flickr for pictures, last.fm for music, etc. Facebook is less strongly themed simply because it was first to hit the critical mass - I wouldn't put "First, I'll get as many users as Facebook, then ..." in my business plan.

Nonetheless, it seems that of the dozens of "social networks for scientists", most are trying to be successful by being the first in their niche, despite clear indications that if it's just networking you're looking for, you'll go where your friends or colleagues already are, which is most likely Facebook, for historical reasons that can't be replicated.

Friendfeed bucked the trend to some degree and developed a strong and active life scientist community (despite not being "for scientists"), mostly due to the utter simplicity of the interface, lacking all the Facebook cruft. Now, learning from the failures of the myriad "for scientists" networks, Mendeley http://mendeley.com has been developed as a social research tool that builds a social network based on the data researchers are working with. This allows connections to emerge based on what people are reading, so the value of the service isn't dependent on first having millions of users. In fact, Mendeley Desktop is useful as a standalone service because it organizes and backups up your PDFs as well as integrates with your Word processor to simplify citation management and bibliography creation. Just as with last.fm (not surprisingly, the two companies share board members) the networking at Mendeley Web arises from people of like interest coming together to share and work with information, not as a reason unto itself.

I represent Mendeley to the life science community, so feel free to click on my name and make contact!

[Christopher Dyer]

At Sci-Mate we are developing different sorts of online software tools to social networks, but essentially aimed at helping researchers share knowledge and technology via the internet (http://www.sci-mate.org/wiki/index.php/About_Sci-Mate). The site was launched in a beta demo version, but from the middle of August 2009 it will take a great leap forward in functionality.

[Jose Morachis]

The regional social networking sites are beginning to take shape. We created MySDscience.com (social network for San Diego scientists) and we will start marketing MyLAscience.com (social network for Los Angeles scientists). Sign up and give it a shot.