Cameron Neylon

[![Sydney Harbour Bridge NYE
fireworks](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3105/3154292974_782e84087f.jpg?v=0){decoding="async"
loading="lazy" align="left" width="378"
height="254"}](http://flickr.com/photos/27038548@N00/3154292974/)All
good traditions require someone to make an arbitrary decision to do
something again. Last year I threw up a few New Year's resolutions in
the hours before NYE in the UK. Last night I was out on the shore of
Sydney Harbour. I had the laptop -- I thought about writing something --
and then I thought -- nah I can just lie here and look at the pretty
lights. However I did want to follow up the successes and failures of
last year's resolutions and maybe make a few more for this year.

So [last year's
resolutions](http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2007/12/31/some-new-years-resolutions/)
were, roughly speaking, 1) to adopt the principles of the NIH Open
Access mandate when choosing journals for publications, 2) to get more
of the existing data within my group online and available, 3) to take
the whole research group fully open notebook, 4) to mention Open
Notebooks in every talk I gave, and 5) attempt to get explicit funding
for developing open notebook approaches.

So successes -- the research group at RAL is now (technically) working
on an Open Notebook basis. This has taken a lot longer than we expected
and the guys are still really getting a feel for what that means both in
terms of how the record things and how they feel about it. I think it
will improve over time and it just reinforces the message that none of
this is easy.Â  I also made a point about talking about the Open
Notebook approach is every talk I gave -- mostly this was well received
-- often there was some scepticism but the message is getting out there.

However we didn't do so well on picking journals -- most of the papers I
was on this year were driven by other people or were directed requests
for special issues, or both. The papers that I had in mind I still
haven't got written, some drafts exist, but they're definitely not
finished. I also haven't done any real work on getting older data online
-- it has been enough work just trying to manage the stuff we already
have.

Funding is a mixed bag -- [the network
proposal](http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/category/research-network-proposal-for-open-science/)
that was in last New Year's was rejected. A few proposals have gone in
-- more haven't gone in but exist in draft form -- and a group of us
went close to getting a tender to do some research into the uptake of
Web 2. tools in science (more on that later but [Gavin
Baker](http://www.gavinbaker.com) has [written about
it](http://www.gavinbaker.com/2008/12/23/opening-research-proposals-thoughts-on-virtual-collaboration/)
and our [tender document itself is
available](http://www.scribd.com/doc/9402283/Tender-Use-and-relevance-of-web-20-resources-for-researchers)).
The success of the year was the funding that [Jean-Claude
Bradley](http://usefulchem.blogspot.com) obtained from
[Submeta](http://www.submeta.org/) (as well as support from Aldrich
Chemicals and Nature Publishing Group) to support the [Open Notebook
Science Challenge](http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/). I can't take
any credit for this but I think it is a good sign that we may have more
luck this coming year.

So for this year -- there are some follow ons -- and some new ones:

1.  I *will* re-write the network application (and will be asking for
    help) and re-submit it to a UK funder
2.  I will clean up the "Personal View of Open Science" series of blog
    posts and see if I can get it published as a perspectives article in
    a high ranking journal
3.  I will get some of those damn papers finished -- and decide which
    ones are never going to be written and give up on them. Papers I
    have full control over will go by first preference to Gold OA
    journals.
4.  I will pull together the pieces needed to take action on the ideas
    that came out of the Southampton Open Science workshop, specifically
    the idea of a letter signed by a wide range of scientists and
    interested people to a high ranking journal stating the importance
    of working towards published papers being fully supported by data
    and methodological detail that is fully available
5.  I will focus on doing less things and doing them better -- or at
    least making sure the resources are available to do more of the
    things I take on...

I think five is enough things to be going on with. Hope you all have a
happy new year, whenever it may start, and that it takes you further in
the direction you want to go (whether you know what that is now or not)
than you thought was possible.

p.s. I noticed in the comments to [last year's
post](http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2007/12/31/some-new-years-resolutions/)
a comment from one [Shirley Wu](http://shirleywho.wordpress.com)
suggesting the idea of running a session at the [2009 Pacific Symposium
on Biocomputing](http://psb.stanford.edu) -- a proposal that resulted in
the [session we are holding in a few
days](http://psb09openscience.wordpress.com) (again more later on -- we
hope -- streaming video, micro blogging etc). Just thinking about how
much has changed in the way such an idea would be raised and explored in
the last twelve months is food for thought.


All good traditions require someone to make an arbitrary decision to do something again. Last year I threw up a few New Year’s resolutions in the hours before NYE in the UK. Last night I was out on the shore of Sydney Harbour. I had the laptop – I thought about writing something – and then I thought – nah I can just lie here and look at the pretty lights.

Messages de Rogue Scholar

New Year’s Resolutions 2009