Is 1st authorship dead?
Is 1st authorship dead?
Collaborative web documents, instant messaging, open source models of publishing, web 2.0... Current technologies are making it easier to share information real-time and encouraging collaboration amongst scientists. It is only natural to assume that ideas formed in this way will be, by definition, collective. A whole generation of young scientists, fluent in these technologies, are emerging and their collective voice is beginning to be heard. No wonder it feels awkward when they hit graduate school and are told they have to "independent" to succeed. It is as unnatural to ask a young scientist to stop collaborating as it is to tell them to turn off their wireless. The ranking of author system (1st, 2nd, ... last) is dead. Ranking of ideas is alive and well (Diggers, etc) but ranking of people is collecting dust. Ideas will be generated through collaborative groups across geography and academic "rank." To accommodate this natural evolution, funding structures will have to be reformed to reward collaboration and not the false perception of independence. For tomorrows scientists, the concept of academic hierarchy will sound as quaint as the the library card catalog.
Is the "independent" investigator dead?
Is academic research moving toward an industrial model? A logical step from your ideas is that research will progress to collaborative teams that work toward a common goal. Isn't this what happens in industry?
Another interesting possibility is a progression to a system more like that in physics, where theoretical and experimental research are separate. Could we develop a system where benchwork is farmed-out to techs in India? A researcher would design a project theoretically and experimentally, then farm-out the work, get preliminary results, order more data, etc. The "scientists" would truly be the brains behind a project.
Science 2.0
Great post, and I hope that your last sentence really proves to be true. Curtis and I have also been talking about a lot of these ideas over the last few months. We have thought a lot about what web 2.0 means for science communication, publishing, collaborations, authorship, and tenure decisions. Since launching JeffsBench earlier this year we have seen a wide range of issues that arise when science moves from science 1.0 to science 2.0. Many aspects of science take advantage of the web (PubMed, online journals, web submission of grants and papers), but the sharing of information, collaboration and even lab notebooks are all still done the same as they were 100 years ago. I think the change will be slow in coming, but as more young scientists from the MySpace generation enter the field I think we will see the status quo begin to change.