Nature Magazine launches open collaborative space for undergrads

David Weinberger sez, "Nature Magazine, which should be the stodgiest of the stodgiest, continues to show an admirable willingness to experiment (stopping short of doing the full open access Monty). It’s now created Scitable, 'a collaborative learning space for science undergraduates.' It’s got articles, online class tools, teacher collaborative tools, student collaborative tools, discussion areas... This initial implementation focuses on genetics, although Nature is planning on expanding the topics. On top of all that, it’s great to contemplate how blasé we’ve become about the primordial value of collaborative tools. Collaboration is the new greed."

Learn At Scitable (Thanks, David!)

[#1 posted by Master Gracey, January 15, 2009 7:08 AM]

open collaborative space for undergrads

MySpace?

FaceBook?

[#2 posted by zuzu, January 15, 2009 7:29 AM]

Nature Magazine, which should be the stodgiest of the stodgiest

That's probably Science Magazine.

Nature is more like The Economist but for scientists. (or those willing to read research abstracts before they're summarized in Scientific American ala Reader's Digest.)

[#3 posted by Jeff, January 15, 2009 8:09 AM]

ZuZu, I think you'll find that the Economist is generally thought of as the most conservative publication of its sort. So Nature would be more like Forbes.

[#4 posted by matisse, January 15, 2009 8:34 AM]

I see collaboration as one of the absolutely key aspects of human society. The ability to effectively collaborate could almost be the very definition of society including things like families, tribes, companies, teams, etc.

In my current thinking, effective collaboration requires four things: trust, safety, shared goals, and communications. Furthermore, I believe that we humans are barely at the infancy of developing the technologies of collaboration, that what we have now is just an inkling of what we will have in 100 years, 200 years, etc.

So Cory I am fascinated that you would write that "Collaboration is the new greed." Would you please expand on that?

[#5 posted by Bill, January 15, 2009 9:27 AM]

Brent Riggs' website is full of homophobic drivel.

Ugh!

I'm sure a lot of his readers will use this site (Scitable) to promote their belief in ID and try to promote it as a science.

[#6 posted by Avram / Moderator, January 15, 2009 11:02 AM]

BrentRiggs @3, don't use signatures in your comments, or post links back to your website. We welcome comments about the posts, but not bland, meaningless comments designed to advertise your site.

[#7 posted by Patrick Dodds , January 15, 2009 12:36 PM]

BrentRiggs sounds like the name of a geographical area of the North Sea.

[#8 posted by Anonymous, January 15, 2009 1:09 PM]

Neat idea. Pity that they only have 1 topic currently (genetics). Maybe they'll expand it later.

[#9 posted by IHR2, January 15, 2009 5:14 PM]

Nature isn't entirely stodgy. It has let the UK's Resource Centre for Women in SET use its Second Life island for virtual events.