Global Scientific Collaboration
It is not surprising that given the technological advances of the technological advances of the last couple decades that scientists are collaborating with foreign scientists more than ever before. Thomas Adams, from Leeds, UK, picks up on this trend in his recent article in the journal nature (18 October 2012, http://www.nature.com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/nature/journal/v490/n7420/full/490335a.html). Adams tracked collaboration in science by looking at co-authorship of published papers. With this information he created a network of authors spanning the globe (a larger scale of what Professor Kleinberg did in lecture a couple weeks ago). What he found was that the number of co-authors on the average paper has been steadily increasing as have the number of cross-national collaboration.
This trend can really only be good for science. While the United States and the United Kingdom must now work harder than ever to retain their research dominance, knew ideas and perspectives can only help to advance our global scientific knowledge. This idea has been picked up by Ijad Madisch and the other co-founders of ReaserchGate (http://www.researchgate.net/), an online networking site for scientists. The idea behind this site is that our scientific system of journals is stuck in the 20th century, retarding collaboration from what we are able to do and therefore scientific advancement. Members of ResearchGate are exposed to different scientific groups, discussions, and job postings and are encouraged to share data and unpublished experiments. While a service like this will undoubtedly take a while to gain significance in a conservative scientific community, it can only help but increase the already growing global collaboration in science. These trends and advancements represent an exciting time for science, in which a community built on change and creativity has the chance to undergo change to its very community structure.
-Ilan