Information professional Hervé Basset shares his observations about the role of Web 2.0 technology in science intelligence in industry
From Research Information: October/November 2009
In the past months much has been written about the hyped Web 2.0. Evangelists have talked about applying this to almost everything published or diffused online. Many people expect scientists to be leaders of the Web 2.0 pack. Observing the behaviour of my end users, however, it is not yet clear to me whether this prophecy has been achieved.
The concept of science intelligence (SI) in science can be compared with business intelligence for economics. SI is defined as a combination of technology, methods and tools used by an organisation to watch its scientific environment, in order to maintain its level of knowledge and face challenging issues.
It includes the processes of gathering, analysing, storing and diffusing the information. It is about making a science company more innovative, more efficient, more compliant and more competitive.
The concept is not a brand new one, but companies rarely have a global view of the entire system. One group might be excellent on gathering information, while another might focus on internal repositories, for example. For a science organisation, therefore, it can be a temptation to be attracted by religious promises of Science 2.0 as a way that it might improve some of these processes.
Information gathering
Online science has achieved great success in the last few years, thanks to close collaboration between publishers and library services….read entire article here: http://www.researchinformation.info/features/feature.php?feature_id=237
