What are some examples of open source science in action?
The Polymath Project is a great example of Open Source Science. The goal of the project was to use blogs and wikis to collaboratively work on an unsolved problem in mathematics. In less than two months, it was announced that the Polymath participants had worked out an elementary proof, and a manuscript describing the proof is currently being written. The project demonstrated that many people could work together to solve difficult mathematical problems. Reference: Timothy Gowers and Michael Nielsen, Massively collaborative mathematics, Nature, October 14, 2009. Another example is the Life Scientists Room on FriendFeed. Online collaborations are being made there between researchers around the world. Indeed, a paper was recently published in which only three of the eight authors have actually met. This illustrates how the networked world of the Web can be used to advance science. Reference: Huss et al., The Gene Wiki: community intelligence applied to human gene annotation, Nucleic Acids
