Last night we were invited to celebrate the launching of Nature Publishing Group's Network Boston at the Museum of Science here in Boston.
What, you may ask, is Network Boston? It was described as a new digital community center for scientists in the Boston/Cambridge area. Another description would be the academic version of myspace. If all goes well other network sites will open in the near future.
Scientists can post their profile (photo, interests, publications etc. click here to see mine), form community groups (such as an RNAi discussion group), look for jobs in academia and industry (Merck is a financial contributor), blogging (of course) ... and form a constituency. It will also serve as a gateway for scientists and non-scientists to engage each other. So in many ways Boston Networks parallels the goals of Seed magazine and Scienceblogs. One difference - Networks Boston looks to be more interactive. Hopefully BN will not descend into anarchy seen on other interactive websites. In any case I applaud anyone who attempts to create resources for the scientific community.
And BTW the whole thing is free ... in fact if you are in the Boston area and create a profile, you'll receive a free subscription to Nature's electronic edition. So check it out.
Interesting. But why Boston? Isn't the internet border-less?
Speaking of Nature, did you see the new "Open" route for peer-review unveiled in this week's issue? Looks interesting, but I frankly can't believe that they are actually doing it (although its obvious they are). I'd be interested to hear your comments, since you regularly post on such topics.
Hi, I am from Nature and yes we are doing it! Come to our site and look, we invite you to post your comments on our peer review debate blog.
all best
Maxine.
You might also check out ResearchCrossroads. This site was created by proactively downloading publicly funded grants and connecting them to researcher profiles.
It's much more of a MySpace for researchers.