Ulrich Herb

The Library Journal two days ago informed about an interesting patent
granted to the Social Network
[ResearchGate](https://www.researchgate.net/){target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"}: "[ResearchGate Granted U.S. Patent
10,282,424: 'Linking Documents Using
Citations'](https://www.infodocket.com/2019/05/07/researchgate-granted-u-s-patent-10282424-linking-documents-using-citations/){target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"}". The abstract describes the patent as
follows..."Aspects of the present disclosure relate to linking documents
using citations. A server accesses a stored document in a data
repository. The server determines a set of candidate citing documents
that cite the stored document. The server obtains, for each candidate
citing document from the set, first information representing an impact
of the candidate citing document taken as a whole and second information
representing a citation context within the candidate citing document.
The server determines a subset of citing documents, from the set of
candidate citing documents, based on the obtained first information and
the obtained second information. The server provides a digital
transmission of the stored document, including visible indicia of the
subset of citing documents, for display at a client device." Sounds to
me like automated citation analysis enriched with semantic intelligence.

 

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The Library Journal two days ago informed about an interesting patent granted to the Social Network ResearchGate: “ResearchGate Granted U.S. Patent 10,282,424: ‘Linking Documents Using Citations’”. The abstract describes the patent as follows…“Aspects of the present disclosure relate to linking documents using citations. A server accesses a stored document in a data repository.

ReseachGate is granted a patent for (semantic) citation analysis

I have long been an advocate of Friendfeed as a great tool for researchers. Here I discuss the new Friendfeed clone built for researchers, ScienceFeed, suggest what it is good for and what its weaknesses are.

Cameron Neylon

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[![Image representing FriendFeed as depicted in C\...](http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0000/1096/1096v1-max-250x250.png "Image representing FriendFeed as depicted in C..."){decoding="async"}](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/friendfeed)
:   Image via [CrunchBase](http://www.crunchbase.com)

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I have been saying for quite some time that I think
[Friendfeed](http://friendfeed.com "FriendFeed"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage"} offers a unique combination of functionality that seems
to work well for scientists, researchers, and the people they want to
(or should want to) have conversations with. For me the core of this
functionality lies in two places: first that the system explicitly
supports conversations that centre around objects. This is different to
[Twitter](http://twitter.com) which supports conversations but doesn't
centre them around the object -- it is actually not trivial to find all
the tweets about a given paper for instance.
[Facebook](http://facebook.com "Facebook"){.zem_slink rel="homepage"}
now has similar functionality but it is much more often used to have
pure conversation. Facebook is a tool mainly used for person to person
interactions, it is user- or person-centric. Friendfeed, at least as it
is used in my space is object-centric, and this is the key aspect in
which "social networks for science" need to differ from the consumer
offerings in my opinion.Â This idea can trace a fairly direct lineage
via [Deepak Singh](http://mndoci.com) to the [Jeff
Jonas](http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/)/[Jon
Udell](http://blog.jonudell.net/) concatenation of soundbites:

> "Data finds dataâ€¦then people find people"

The second key aspect about Friendfeed is that it gives the user a great
deal of control over what they present to represent themselves. If we
accept the idea that researchers want to interact with other researchers
around research objects then it follows that the objects that you choose
to represent yourself is crucial to creating your online persona. I
choose not to push [Twitter](http://twitter.com "Twitter"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage"} into Friendfeed mainly because my tweets are directed at
a somewhat different audience. I do choose to bring in video, slides,
blog posts, papers, and other aspects of my work life. Others might
choose to include [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com "Flickr"){.zem_slink
rel="homepage"} but not
[YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/ "YouTube"){.zem_slink rel="homepage"}.
Flexibility is key because you are building an online presence. Most of
the frustration I see with online social tools and their use by
researchers centres around a lack of control in which content goes where
and when.

So as an advocate of Friendfeed as a template for tools for scientists
it is very interesting to see how that template might be applied to
tools built with researchers in mind.
[ScienceFeed](http://www.sciencefeed.com) launched yesterday byÂ [Ijad
Madisch](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ijad_Madisch), the person
behind ResearchGate. The first thing to say is that this is an out and
out clone of Friendfeed, from the position of the buttons to the overall
layout. It seems not to be built on the [Tornado
server](http://www.tornadoweb.org/) that was open sourced by the
Friendfeed team so questions may hang over scalability and architecture
but that remains to be tested. The main UI difference with Friendfeed is
that the influence of another 18 months of development of social
infrastructure is evident in the use of
[OAuth](http://oauth.net "OAuth"){.zem_slink rel="homepage"} to rapidly
leverage existing networks and information on Friendfeed, Twitter, and
Facebook. Although it still requires some profile setup, this is good to
see. It falls short of the kind of true federation which we might hope
to see in the future but then so does everything else.

In terms of specific functionality for scientists the main additions is
a specialised tool for adding content via a search of literature
databases. This seems to be adapted from the ResearchGate tool for
populating a profile's publication list. A welcome addition and
certainly real tools for researchers must treat publications as first
class objects. But not groundbreaking.

The real limitation of ScienceFeed is that it seems to miss the point of
what Friendfeed is about. There is currently no mechanism for bringing
in and aggregating diverse streams of content automatically. It is nice
to be able to manually share items in my citeulike library but this
needs to happen automatically. My blog posts need to come in as do my
slideshows on slideshare, my preprints on Nature Precedings or Arxiv.
Most of this information is accessible via RSS feeds so import via
RSS/Atom (and in the future real time protocols like XMPP) is an
absolute requirement. Without this functionality, ScienceFeed is just a
souped up microblogging service. And as was pointed out yesterday in
[one friendfeed
thread](http://friendfeed.com/scilib/77defe29/twitter-for-scientists-thing-i-don-t-see-point)
we have a twitter-like service for scientists. It's called Twitter. With
the functionality of automatic feed aggregation Friendfeed can become a
presentation of yourself as a researcher on the web. An automated
publication list that is always up to date and always contains your
latest (public) thoughts, ideas, and content. In short your web-native
business card and CV all rolled into one.

Finally there is the problem of the name. I was very careful at the top
of this post to be inclusive in the scope of people who I think can
benefit from Friendfeed. One of the great strengths of Friendfeed is
that it has promoted conversations across boundaries that are
traditionally very hard to bridge. The ongoing collision between the
library and scientific communities on Friendfeed may rank one day as its
most important achievement, at least in the research space. I wonder
whether the conversations that have sparked there would have happened at
all without the open scope that allowed communities to form without
prejudice as to where they came from and then to find each other and
mingle. There is nothing in ScienceFeed that precludes anyone from
joining as far as I can see, but the name is potentially exclusionary,
and I think unfortunate.

Overall I think ScienceFeed is a good discussion point, a foil to
critical thinking, and potentially a valuable fall back position if
Friendfeed does go under. It is a place where the wider research
community could have a stronger voice about development direction and an
opportunity to argue more effectively for business models that can
provide confidence in a long term future. I think it currently falls far
short of being a useful tool but there is the potential to use it as a
spur to build something better. That might be ScienceFeed v2 or it might
be an entirely different service. In a follow-up post I will make some
suggestions about what such a service might look like but for now I'd be
interested in what other people think.

Other Friendfeed threads are
[here](http://friendfeed.com/science-2-0/af61dc31/sciencefeed-launches-friendfeed-like)
and [here](http://friendfeed.com/ajc/9dbebb13/sciencefeed) and
Techcrunch has also [written up the
launch](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/15/sciencefeed-launches-friendfeed-like-platform-for-scientists/).

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Image via CrunchBase  I have been saying for quite some time that I think Friendfeed offers a unique combination of functionality that seems to work well for scientists, researchers, and the people they want to (or should want to) have conversations with. For me the core of this functionality lies in two places: first that the system explicitly supports conversations that centre around objects.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

ReseachGate is granted a patent for (semantic) citation analysis

Friendfeed for Research? First impressions of ScienceFeed