Science 2.0 and rights protection

I was reading in Scientific American about how modern scientists and researchers are beginning to use web technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networks.

So-called Science 2.0 is trying to take advantage of the same technology used by other groups to provide tools for sharing knowledge, research notes and experience.

But not everybody is happy. Science 2.0 is hitting the same problem that many technologists have faced for years. You publish an idea, or even the smallest component of a solution and then risk being beaten to the finish line because someone has taken your research and managed to complete the final parts of the work before you do. Others are more philosophical - sharing the information allows others to contribute and provide their knowledge and input to the process, without necessarily looking for the same financial or credit reward. Consider this the equivalent of open source science.

Some others even question whether the sharing of such information itself is helpful, on the basis that conflicting ideas and contradictions just serve to muddy the waters. How do you determine what is useful input to research, and what is simply noise.

The article itself is interesting, but SA went one step further and published the content of the article before publication in the printed magazine so that people could read and comment on the content and provide their own views and perspective that would then get incorporated into the published article. An exercise in Publishing 2.0, perhaps.

The core problem - getting views and sharing opinions - without losing your right to the information you have created is key here. And it's not about information and ideas that are in a currently recognized form that allows for their automatic protection.

I've just experienced the same through a friend who has written a children's book. She is hugely protective of the work because, understandably, she doesn't want the content or the ideas stolen by someone who wants to put their own name on the front sheet. We tried a number of different methods so that I could see a copy and provide her with my input, but that excluded solutions like email (hackable) or printing it out (too easy to obtain and copy). We worked something out in the end, but now I've seen it, am I as dangerous and potentially a threat as the email or printed solutions?

She cannot copyright the work (easily) without it being published which provides automatic copyright. Scientists cannot turn their ideas and theories into protected items until they are patentable, and that means having a working prototype. Difficult if you are still working out the details of how your cancer treatment works. Sharing your ideas on a Blog or Wiki automatically makes your ideas free to any viewer, but without any way to prevent those ideas and theories from being used to further their own work and research. How do you tell if a solution to a scientific problem was copied from someone else or arrived at by their own hard work?

Although it sounds like a purely commercial argument - protecting copyright and patents is normally about the money you can make at the other end - it could equally be applied to the non-commercial elements. Writing a book is a very personal thing to do, and not something you want stolen from you before you have been able to share that with your friends, family, and the rest of the world. For many scientists their ideas and products have the same emotional energy attached to them.

How do you let people share knowledge and experience about an idea and provide you with input and commentary, without, simultaneously, providing them with everything they need to reproduce that idea and to take that idea and extend and develop their own enhancements and improvements?

For most people it means playing with their cards held very close to their chest, and only releasing the information once they have completed their part of the process. For a book, that's probably not a problem.

For Science 2.0 that could be the part of the process that is holding us all back and stretching out the time to investigate the problems and find solutions. Collaboration in the global economy across countries has got to be the way to improve the rate of scientific discovery. Do we need a new way to look at and track people's contributions to protect individuals rights? Not just in science, but in computing, philosophy, medicine?

Perhaps this is what Web 3.0 should be all about - making it easier for the interests of the contributors to be retained while still allowing people to effectively communicate and collaborate.