More Talk on Open Notebooks

There is an editorial discussing Open Notebook Science in last week's Nature "Share your lab notes", repeated on one of the Nature blog Nautilus.

The article has stirred up some good discussion on a number of blogs, mainly on Bora's Blog Around the Clock and Pimm

Bjorn makes some pretty dire predictions about all this in a comment on Bora's blog:

In times of ever more limited funding and more and more competition, open science will not emerge. Researchers now have to fight not only for scientific results, but for their own livelihoods and that of their families.The more funding gets cut, the more it needs to be restricted on topics deemed important. More researchers will accumulate in such "hot areas", making them even more important. Nothing will be shared in such a situation, but instead you will see a rise in scientific misconduct

The ability to do science in a fully transparent and open format may be one of the most important functions of tenure at this time in scientific history. Because of that we can operate without reservation and avoid risking our livelihood.

If we do a good job the next wave of open researchers won't have to risk as much without the security of tenure.