Does Open WetWare go anywhere from here?
When I discovered someone identified as the Indispensable Man of Open Science , I also found out about Cameron Neylon’s and other scientists creating open notebook science (making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online) and a website called Open Wetware(OWW).
OWW is both an open science content site and a philosophical statement supporting the sharing in biology and biological engineering. OpenWetWare.org is a science wiki offering recipes, instructions, and sources for biologic materials, protocols, and other resources. OWW also hosts more than 15 blogs, courses, and social/descriptive pages for labs and groups that have aligned themselves with the open science movement. Originally launched by some MIT-affiliated science labs in 2005, there was considerable popularization and growth through 2008.
One of the classic characteristics of a wiki is the ability to follow the history of changes and additions in any section. Selecting the history tab on any page will provide the record of changes and updates. Here are some of the section update dates in the OWW site, as of today:
OpenWetWare Wiki Section: Last Revision/Update
| OpenWetWare Wiki Page | Last Date Updated |
|---|---|
| Main Page | 3 March 2009 |
| Materials | 20 April 2009 |
| Protocols | 11 October 2010 |
| Resources | 2 December 2009 |
| Labs | 22 March 2011 |
| Groups | 20 January 2011 |
| Blogs (page, not entries) | 6 June 2008 |
| New Users | 13 January 2009 |
| Courses | 7 February 2011 |
| Jobs | 16 April 2010 |
| Sister Wikis | 29 April 2009 |
| Hot Computational Biology Papers | 8 June 2008 |
So you can see that the Labs, Groups, and Courses pages have had some recent activity. Many other wiki pages have not had much, if any, updating. The irony is that in the recent rise of open research in the form of the NIH Public Access Policy, the interest in openly sharing bench science activities has plateaued or declined. Or perhaps there is a kind of wiki fatigue? I am not a bench scientist. Any readers want to present an explanation in a comment?
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