Mozilla Launches Science Lab Project, Seeks Better Scientific Collaboration

Mozilla, which is well-known for its dedication to an open web and open standards, has just announced the launch of the Mozilla Science Lab, a new initiative that it is targeting "to help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science’s future." It's worth reading the Mozilla post about this new project. Correctly, the post characterizes scientific practices as stuck in a bygone area, particularly when it comes to sharing and collaboration.

According to the announcement of Mozilla Science Lab:

"Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the 'analog' age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around “papers,” for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible."

"The Science Lab will foster dialog between the open web community and researchers to tackle this challenge. Together they’ll share ideas, tools, and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research more agile and collaborative."

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is helping with funds for the Science Lab project, and it will be lead by Kaitlin Thaney, described as an "open science advocate." Among other achievements, Thaney founded the science program at Creative Commons. 

Mozilla has served up a few different ways to follow this project:

Learn more about the project at the Mozilla Science Wiki.

Follow @MozillaScience and @kaythaney on Twitter.

Follow the project’s progress on Kaitlin’s blog.