Some thoughts on my recent Twitter break

Various people have suggested that taking a break from social networks – Twitter in particular – can be A Good Thing™.

So I tried it, for a couple of weeks. Here’s what I learned.

Academic Karma: a case study in how not to use open data

Update: in response to my feedback, auto-generated profiles without accounts are no longer displayed at Academic Karma. Well done and thanks to them for the rapid response.

A news story in Nature last year caused considerable mirth and consternation in my social networks by claiming that ResearchGate, a “Facebook for scientists”, is widely-used and visited by scientists. Since this is true of nobody that we know, we can only assume that there is a whole “other” sub-network of scientists defined by both usage of ResearchGate and willingness to take Nature surveys seriously.

You might be forgiven, however, for assuming that I have a profile at ResearchGate because here it is. Except: it is not. That page was generated automatically by ResearchGate, using what they could glean about me from bits of public data on the Web. Since they have only discovered about one-third of my professional publications, it’s a gross misrepresentation of my achievements and activity. I could claim the profile, log in and improve the data, but I don’t want to expose myself and everyone I know to marketing spam until the end of time.

One issue with providing open data about yourself online is that you can’t predict how it might be used. Which brings me to Academic Karma.

One reason why scientists don’t comment at journals

This week, Nature announced a new online commenting facility and noted that:

Online discussions about our research papers are likely to be considerably more subdued, according to the experience of other publishers who already allow commenting.

They offer several reasons why this might be the case. Here’s one: it helps if you make it easy.

What does it all mean?

My Tweet Cloud is probably trying to tell me something important. But what? Thanks to Attila for pointing to the resource.