Scispace.net

Infobox Website
name = scispace.net


url = http://scispace.net/
commercial = No
type = Social network service for collaborating researchers
registration = By invitation, but invitations can be requested
owner = Ian Frame, , Kat Austen, Toby White, Dan Wilson, Mark Calleja
author = The owners
location = University of Cambridge
launch date = April 2007
current status = Active

Scispace.net is a non-commercial, non-profit and free-to-use social network service designed specifically for collaborating researchers. In several respects it builds on many of the tools found in standard social network service and elearning sites, such as the use of wikis, blogs, comments, tags, comment walls, and profiles. However, unlike many of these sites, privacy and fine-grained access control is of paramount importance. For example, a small group of researchers using these tools to develop a set of ideas that will ultimately lead to a publication or funding proposal need to be certain that their ideas, and the existence of these ideas, will not be seen by others. Until the advent of social network service and related web 2.0 technologies, the primary tool for collaborators has been email, which the owners/authors feel serves this purpose only poorly [ [http://scispace.net/martin/weblog/120.html Martin Dove :: Blog :: eMail is a tool for communication, not collaboration ] ] .

Scispace.net has been developed by scientists working within an academic environment, but the owners/authors believe that this approach should be able to meet the needs of collaborators working in different disciplines and different environments. In many ways scispace.net is an active experiment in how these tools can be used to support collaborative research, in what is actually a fast-changing environment.

Features

The main features available for members include
* User profiles to both explain your work/interests/expertise and to discover other potential collaborators
* Ability to form communities
* Fine-grained access control over user content and community content
* RSS feeds and the ability to aggregate external RSS feeds
* User/community tools such as wikis, blogs, comments, messages, tags, comment walls.
* Ability to upload images and documents for sharing with collaborators.Scispace.net is built on the Elgg package, which as a white label, open source product is ideal for academic applications.

History

The owners/authors have a strong interest in e-science in their professional work, one significant component of which is to support collaboration between researchers. With experience of social network service sites such as Facebook in their personal lives, they were prompted to think about a social network service site that could support collaborating researchers during some breakout discussions at a scientific workshop (January 2007) [ [http://www.niees.ac.uk/events/epollutants/index.shtml National Institute for Environmental eScience. ePollutants workshop ] ] when participants kept suggesting that it would be useful to such a tool -- the phrase used was a "MySpace for scientists". This led to some analysis of what was then available (including network.nature.com) in terms of existing services, and an analysis of the available tools. The conclusion was that the better approach was to create a social network service specifically tailored to the needs of collaborating researchers rather than attempt to use an existing social network service, and that this could be based on the Elgg package. It has initially been hosted by the National Institute for Environmental eScience based at the University of Cambridge.

About the owners/authors

The owners/authors have a strong interest in using modern technologies -- particularly web-based techologies -- to support collaborative research. The e-science slant on this is the use of technologies to support virtual organizations. The owners/authors original approach involved developing and using shared file-systems for easy exchange of data and information (one example being the storage resource broker) [http://www.allhands.org.uk/2007/proceedings/papers/831.pdf] , information-centric representations of data and corresponding tools [http://www.allhands.org.uk/2006/proceedings/papers/666.pdf] , the development of metadata services [http://www.allhands.org.uk/2007/proceedings/papers/832.pdf] , and the use of communications tools such as instant messaging and the Access Grid [ [http://www.allhands.org.uk/2004/proceedings/papers/83.pdf eminerals_VO.indd ] ] . They were also using tools such as wikis and blogs extensively, but increasingly felt the need for an integrated collaborative tool that would exploit the advantages of social network service tools.

References

External links

* [http://www.nerc.ac.uk/publications/planetearth/2007/winter/win07-news.pdf Article in "Planet Earth", published by NERC (Winter 2007, p 3)]
* [http://www.nesc.ac.uk/news/newsletter/January08.pdf Cybernetworking… We’re Virtually working together, article published in Edition 57, p 2, of "NeSC News", Jan/Feb 2008]