Image via Wikipedia Michael Nielsen‘s talk at Science Online was a real eye opener for many of us who have been advocating for change in research practice. He framed the whole challenge of change as an example of a well known problem, that of collective action. How do societies manage big changes when those changes often represent a disadvantage to many individuals, at least in the short term.

Image via Wikipedia Science Online London ran late last week and into the weekend and I was very pleased to be asked to run a panel, broadly speaking focused on evaluation and incentives. Now I had thought that the panel went pretty well but I’d be fibbing if I said I wasn’t a bit disappointed. Not disappointed with the panel members or what they said.

Michael Nielsen is a good friend as well as being an inspiration to many of us in the Open Science community. I’ve been privileged to watch and in a small way to contribute to the development of his arguments over the years and I found the distillation of these years of effort into the talk that he recently gave at TEDxWaterloo entirely successful.

Michael Nielsen asked me to answer some questions about practical approaches to Open Science. You can see my answers up on his blog.