This page aims to give an overview of other scientific wikis available online, and provide some perspective on why we are pursuing a wiki as our preferred means of building engagement within the Southern Ocean Research Community.
The list contained here is not exhaustive or comprehensive.
Scientific wiki examples
Coastal wiki
Coastal wiki is a wiki developed for the European Coastal Community as part of a larger program called Encora which has the aim of "Sharing Knowledge within Europe for Integrated Coastal Management". It was developed in 2007, It is a publicly viewable wiki for access to the content, but to edit or add articles, authorisation is required. It contains project-specific portals (which essentially share the same structure within the wiki framework). You can obtain metadata like summaries of projects (example here), and it has a linked contact database with over 2800 people listed, from almost 1400 institutes and 500+ projects (please note it is not entirely clear how many users the wiki actually has, nor what an "institute" means in this wiki).
Prometheus wiki
A wiki for PROtocols, METHods, Explanations and Updated Standards in Ecological and Environmental Plant Physiology. The PrometheusWiki site is a collaborative effort between the PrometheusWiki Editorial Board, CSIRO PUBLISHING
, and with the support of the ARC/NZ Research Network for Vegetation Function.
Wikigenes
WikiGenes is a collaborative knowledge resource for the life sciences, which is based on the general wiki idea but employs specifically developed technology to serve as a rigorous scientific tool. The rationale behind WikiGenes is to provide a platform for the scientific community to collect, communicate and evaluate knowledge about genes, chemicals, diseases and other biomedical concepts in a bottom-up process (see Hoffmann (2008) for more information).
PacMARA
PacMARA (the Pacific Marine Analysis and Research Association) seeks to develop and encourage the use of cross-disciplinary marine science in ecosystem-based decision-making. They take an impartial, non-advocacy approach, believing that access to data, good science, and clear results are at the heart of sustainable oceans management. The wiki was developed in 2010. It is hard to determine the usage of the wiki.
CSIRO
The CSIRO wiki is a mixture of publicly accessible pages and restricted pages. It appears that it is primarily used as a project collaboration tool - working across multiple sites (geographically) and providing opportunity to share documents and files. The wiki doesn't seem to have been developed with the public accessibility in mind - most of the content appears specifically for scientists using the wiki. The CSIRO Wiki uses Confluence v 3.5.16 - it is not clear how many users it has.
Advantages of wikis
Wikis offer geographically dispersed group members a centralised, web-based knowledge repository for storing shared and created knowledge.
Coastal wiki provides a good overview of why science should use wikis here. Some of the text from the page is reproduced below:
There is abundant information on coastal and marine processes and issues. But most of this information is not easy to find or to use. Existing documentation and publication practices do not enable taking full advantage of present knowledge and experience. The present situation is:
- scientific knowledge is communicated mainly among fellow experts; scientific publications focus on specific disciplinary aspects and are almost inaccessible to non-expert coastal and marine professionals;
- integrated assessments of coastal and marine issues often refer to specific field situations and are published as grey literature or brochures, which are hard to find and to get;
- results published on project sites often become inaccessible shortly after the project has ended.
Powerful search systems have been developed to retrieve information from the Internet, but due to the huge proliferation of websites generally not more than a fraction of the relevant information is found. Use of this information is further hampered by lack of coherence among the information pieces and lack of comprehensiveness and context. Some pieces of information may be outdated and others may be unreliable. For these reasons much coastal and marine knowledge existing in research institutes and in practitioners organizations throughout Europe is not fully used and similar studies are carried out more than once. New knowledge dissemination practices are needed for Europe to take better advantage of existing knowledge, especially for use in practice and policy.
The wiki concept ... complements present knowledge dissemination practices and mitigates major shortcomings: scientific publications only accessible to experts, lack of interdisciplinary links, difficult access to practical knowledge and experience due to dispersal over grey literature sources, lack of comprehensiveness and consistency among sources, not freely accessible literature and sources which are not up to date; unacceptable delays in establishing intellectual property rights through traditional publishing routes.
Disadvantages of wikis
Scientists are, ironically, somewhat reluctant to engage in new technology (see Butler 2005, Gorman 2005).
Wikis can be set up, and then not used - usage statistics from EcoliWiki show that while a wiki can have many registered users (in this case almost 800), the level of activity of those users can be low.
Incentives for engagement are required, continual promotion and inclusion from an engaged editorial board seems to be important.
While wikis offer a number of benefits for supporting knowledge creation in collaborative groups, the literature suggests a strong need to establish conventions to enable long term success. As noted by Godwin-Jones (2003), such a system only works with users serious about collaborating and willing to follow the group conventions and practices. Fichter (2005) supports this notion stating that “technology should be a supportive player in any collaboration effort, not the driver”. Establishing conventions involves not only the development of wiki guidelines and etiquette for user participation, but also ensuring that the wiki group follow the proposed conventions. As noted by Chawner and Lewis (2006), large successful wikis usually have some type of constitution or philosophy that establishes goals and provides guidelines for individuals who want to participate in the group.
Above text from Watson & Harper (2007).
The links/references below provide further information and 'food for thought' about some of the more cultural/non-operational issues relating to using wikis for science (and knowledge management in general).
References/Further reading/Links
Canady, M (2010). The wonderful world of wikis for life scientists - http://sdbn.org/2010/06/14/the-wonderful-world-of-wikis-for-life-scientists/
Hoffmann, R. (2008). A wiki for the life sciences were authorship matters. Nature Genetics 40, 1047 - 1051.
Ruth, A. & Houghton, L. (2009). The wiki way of learning. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25(2), 135-152. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/ruth.html
Gorman, G.E (2005). "Editorial: Is the wiki concept really so wonderful?", Online Information Review, Vol. 29 Iss: 3, pp.225 - 226
Butler, D. (2005). Science in the web age: Joint efforts. Nature, 438 (7068), 548-549.
Watson, K & Harper, C. (2007). Supporting knowledge creation: Using wikis for group collaboration. Educause Australasia 2007 Conference proceedings: Advancing Knowledge: Pushing Boundaries, Melbourne.
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