Internet Etiquette for Researchers

The Internet is a fantastic forum for interaction. For example, although I am based in California, I recently felt moved to comment on the issue of independence for Scotland on a newspaper website – it was exhilarating to play just a small part in a passionate and important debate, especially so far from home.

The downside is that many contributions on such forums are not worth reading; a good chunk are either depressing or simply offensive. But that’s the price we currently pay for mass interaction/free speech.

Surely this doesn’t apply to a group like scientists? Online forums are the perfect venue to debate the quality and meaning of data in real-time, with almost no chance of any infantile name-calling. But is the research community mature enough to handle the responsibility?

The establishment says, “No.” A quick scan found no comment facility on Analytical Chemistry, Journal of Chromatography A, Nature Materials or Journal of Proteomics. To their credit, Science and PLOS One do allow comments. But, in the main, science publishers and editors want to retain the status quo, that is, they want to keep control. This is nicely illustrated by a recent editorial in ACS Nano (1), which suggests that you kindly lodge any comments with the authorities (them) rather than through social media.

Thankfully, a number of newish sites do promote vigorous scientific discourse on the published literature. Among these are Retraction Watch (2), which, I should declare, is co- run by my friend and former colleague Ivan Oransky, and PubPeer (3). To see PubPeer in action, look at “Anonymous cowards vs the scientific establishment”, which questions the veracity of an ultrasensitive assay called plasmonic ELIZA (4). Another new site, PubMed Commons (5) is run by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, part of NIH, bringing post-publication review into the mainstream. Kudos to them.

PubPeer allows posters to remain anonymous; PubMed Commons does not. It will be interesting to see how that affects the character of the two sites as they develop.

The only potential issue raised by increased engagement is the need to ensure that all parties are treated fairly; one author whose work was criticized online (6) has already claimed to “…have been subject to chemical cyberbullying,” even stating, “I understand what kids that commit suicide go through.”

I felt this was an overreaction having read the comments; however, the question of community standards is something that all scientists should have their say on, so that an agreed code of behavior emerges.