ScienceOnline2012 - Parting Thoughts

My thoughts on Days 2 and 3 of ScienceOnline2012 are found elsewhere - here I sum up some other impressions.

Twitter at ScienceOnline
This is the first time I've actively tweeted through an entire meeting, and found it to be a worthwhile addition. It was cool to see what other folks in my sessions were thinking (at times it was like passing notes in class), and also nice to be able to follow the sessions in other rooms. Over 300 active users participated (on and off-site), and over 17,000 tweets discussed the meeting (see this cool summary map)! It's this broad participation that took Twitter from just being a small piece of the meeting to an essential component - an important observation for groups like Society of Vertebrate Paleontology that might want to acknowledge (or even encourage) Twitter.

Some thoughts on the state of blogging
One perception I have after ScienceOnline 2012 is that blogging - as an activity and as a medium of communication - seems to have reached a relatively mature state. Sure, there are incremental advances and changes, but by and large I don't really get the sense that there is much substantively new going on (other than new people joining the blogging fold on occasion). This is somewhat reflected by the blogging-relevant sessions at ScienceOnline2012 - they are much the same kind of stuff you might have seen at ScienceOnline 2010, or 2009, or 2011. Topics like getting students involved in blogging, increasing acceptance of blogging in academia, use of images on blogs, etc., are important but really not much advanced beyond where we were a few years ago. [brief note - this should not be interpreted as me saying that I think things are just OK as they are - in fact, it is a rather sad thing that some of these issues are still issues!]

I don't mean this as a criticism, but just a state of how things are. In fact, stability is partly a good thing in that someone new to the world of blogging can jump in with clear role models, expectations, and pathways to success (whatever success may be). Many of the broad principles have been laid out, and now we're working on refining the details. Some big issues do remain (we can always increase the acceptance of quality blogging for academic career advancement, for instance), but many of these will probably just require the imperceptible cultural shifts that happen over time.

Some thoughts on the state of online science
Perhaps it just reflects my own intellectual trajectory, but it seems like we're approaching some measure of stability for many of the old issues in science  communication. Open access - important, but not really novel anymore. Blogging - same thing. Social media - ditto. As all of these trends started, I took a wait-and-see approach before engaging myself. As such, I have missed out on getting in at the very, very beginning of some trends, but have also avoided wasting time with trends that haven't much gone anywhere or have fizzled out (e.g., SecondLife and GoogleWave, to name just two). Based on my attendance at ScienceOnline 2012, the areas to watch include:

• Crowdfunding: Small donations can add up to decent funding for a focused project, and present unique outreach opportunities. In a field of shoestring budgets like paleontology, I see crowdfunding as a potentially important new trend.
• Article-level metrics and data set archival and citation: I've tied these two topics together because they reflect a major advance beyond the old journal-level metrics like Impact Factor. Neither topic is completely new, but I saw plenty of new tools at ScienceOnline that may move the discussions and usage of these metrics forward. Furthermore, there is still a long way to go for community buy-in.

There may indeed be some major issues to watch in science art or writing that I have missed because I'm not really plugged in to those communities, so please comment if there is something I missed!

ScienceOnline2012 - Day 3

In Day 3 of ScienceOnline 2012 (my second day), we had a fun mix of split sessions and common gatherings. Areas of interest for me included:

• Students as Messengers of Science: This discussion focused on how to engage high school and college students in science blogging. There are no easy solutions, but there were some tips to get them started. In particular, planning is key. What is the goal? Who are the potential readers? 
• Why the Resistance to Science Blogging? This session was pretty much as advertised. Unfortunately, there was little new here - yes, there are downsides to putting yourself out there on a blog, but for the most part it seems like it will just take slow attrition of the skeptics to normalize blogging for non-blogging scientists. Same issues as in 2011, 2010, 2009. . .but little in the way of new solutions. One good piece of advice, though: should we put blogging activity on our CV, and if so how? In many cases, there are impactful ways to describe this activity - online outreach editor, web editor, etc. These or similar terms can be honest, accurate descriptors that are more positive for those who might be instinctively averse to the word "blog."
• Raising Money for Your Science and Journalism with Crowd Funding: This session filled in many of the details related to yesterday's demo - and was quite interesting. One clear worry is that crowd funding in science could be hijacked by "stodgy" forces that try to impose NSF-style limitations on the crowdfunding community (e.g., layers of vetting by experts, etc. - in fact, I think the odds are quite good that someone will un-ironically submit an NSF proposal in the near future to put together a service to validate and serve as a clearinghouse for crowdfunding science). This could have the chilling effect of squeezing out small players in favor of big institutions that are already comparatively well-funded. Vigilance is required - and the situation will doubtlessly change rapidly over the next few years. Either way, it has cool potential.
• CyberScreen Science Film Festival: Again, what the label says. I'm hoping to find a link to a list of the films - there were some really excellent ones.
• Closing Plenary Panel on Scientist/Journalist Relations: This isn't a new topic (see here for one recent post), and is getting a little tiresome for many. Lots of discussion, little movement from either side. My thought is that the real problem is not with the journalists or scientists at ScienceOnline, but the reporters who aren't science specialists, or who just copy press releases, or who throw stuff together without contacting relevant scientists.

Next. . .parting thoughts.

ScienceOnline2012 - Day 2

ScienceOnline is really one of those unique experiences - explicitly set up as an "UnConference," it encourages freewheeling input from all attendees, bursting the bounds of conventional presentations. In fact there really aren't presentations in the conventional sense. The presenter is only a facilitator; everyone else is encouraged to join in the conversation. As such, it is both a disconcerting and intensely rewarding experience.

In my second trip to one of these unconferences (see here for my report on the last trip), ScienceOnline 2012 has proven to be worth every instant of invested time. It's been enjoyable to meet the faces behind the websites, interact with science media types (both bloggers and "conventional" reporters), and learn about the current trends in doing science in the internet age.

Work scheduling meant I had to miss the first day of the conference (disappointing, as there were some good sessions), but I was happy to drop in Day 2. Some highlights of the sessions included:

• Saying howdy to the infamous Bora Zivkovic - a tireless promoter for science on the internet, and arguably one of the most influential individuals out there in the new science communication landscape (Bora is the reason why I'm involved with PLoS ONE!).
• Seeing a presentation from the talented high school students behind Extreme Biology Blog. It's tough to balance the demands of being a high school student and being a blogger - but blogging can clearly be a good component of the curriculum.
• Learning about FigShare.com - a newly revamped way to share all sorts of data (not just figures!). This looks to have some great potential, especially once the long-term archiving is worked out (which seems to be on the near horizon)
• Learning about ROMEO, a clearinghouse for summaries of publisher policies - a great place to find out whether you can post a copy of your paper on your own site, for instance.
• ORCID is an upcoming service to assign unique identifiers to researchers. Launching later this year.
• Annotum is a WordPress plug-in to allow writing, peer-review, editing, and publication of scientific papers.
• SciFund is a way to crowdfund research projects. But, it's not just about collecting dollars - the most successful fundraisers made a solid outreach connection with the public.
• I really enjoyed visiting with some of the other paleontologists here. It is nice to see other paleo folks on the ScienceOnline bandwagon, but also a little distressing how out of touch many of our colleagues are with the world of online outreach!

One interesting observation is the slight change in feel of the conference from 2010. Back then, scienceblogs.com was the reigning champion of science communication - and to be honest, parts of the 2010 banquet felt like a string of in-jokes between a handful of  bloggers. As the landscape has shifted, it feels as if things are a little more inclusive. All in all, a good thing! ScienceOnline2012 is a little bigger, but it has retained all of the charm and good qualities that made ScienceOnline2010 a useful, fun experience. Kudos to the organizers and presenters!

New Fossil Species of 2011 - A PLoS ONE Retrospective

What do sauropods, primates, crabs, cats, and crocodiles have in common? They're all animals in the fossil record that had new species named in PLoS ONE this year!

Chela (claw) of Geograpsus severnsi, from Paulay & Starmer, 2011

As 2011 winds down, I'm going to devote two posts to some navel-gazing at paleontology in the online, open access journal PLoS ONE. PLoS ONE really has been a ground-breaking publication, partly responsible for spawning the term "megajournal" as well as inspiring clones from the very publishers who invested some effort over the past few years in downplaying the worth of the PLoS ONE publishing model.

[Note before we continue: Although I do have an "official" volunteer role as one of the academic and section editors for the journal, any opinions in this post are entirely my own.]

Skull of Arenysuchus gascabadiolorum, from Puértolas et al., 2011

In any case, let's start our 2011 retrospective with a look at some of the new taxonomy that appeared this year. 17 new species of extinct organism were named on the "pages" of PLoS ONE this year, but these were not by any means distributed evenly across the tree of life.

Five out of 17 were mammals, only one was a non-vertebrate (a lonely, recently extinct land crab from Hawaii), and three - THREE!!! - were sauropodomorph dinosaurs. What kind of crazy world is this where sauropodomorph taxa outnumber crocodylimorphs, and arthropods? Dinosaurs as a whole did quite well, with seven new non-avian dinosaurs gracing the HTML code of PLoS ONE.

New Fossil Taxa Named in PLoS ONE - 2011
Arenysuchus gascabadiolorum (crocodyliform)
Boutakioutichnium atlasicus (theropod footprint)
Gaudeamus aslius (rodent)
Gaudeamus hylaeus (rodent)
Geograpsus severnsi (crab)
Kawichthys moodiei (chondrichthyan)
Khoratpithecus ayeyarwadyensis (primate)
Leonerasaurus taquetrensis (sauropodomorph)
Leyesaurus marayensis (sauropodomorph)
Linhevenator tani (troodontid)
Lycophocyon hutchisoni (carnivoramorph mammal)
Panthera zdanskyi (felid)
Paravipus didactyloides (theropod footprint)
Pissarrachampsa sera (crocodyliform)
Talos sampsoni (troodontid)
Tapuiasaurus macedoi (sauropod)
Tonsala buchanani (bird)

In 2012, I would love to see the following trends:

• An expansion in the number of new taxa published in PLoS ONE (assuming that high scientific standards are maintained - no junk taxa, please).
• Greater diversity in the taxonomic groups represented. Archosaurs are cool and all, but where are the plants? Where are the brachiopods? This will probably just take time, and perhaps a pioneer in each field of study to raise awareness of the journal. I first seriously considered publishing in PLoS ONE because a high-profile dinosaur worker published there, and I suspect other folks in other fields have similar thoughts.
• More authors taking advantage of the format of PLoS ONE when submitting their new taxonomy. With few or no practical limits on figures (color, size, number) and text, every new description could potentially (and should, with few exceptions) get the monographic treatment. I am happy to say that most authors did just this, but there is always room for improvement!

Skull of Tapuiasaurus macedoi, from Zaher et al., 2011

In the next post: PLoS ONE is now a major force in paleontological publishing. What were the overall trends in 2011? What might the future bring?

The Paleo Project Challenge

I've been woefully behind in promoting this (and Dave Hone has taken the lead in hosting it this year - thank you, Dave!), but it is time to get on with the 2011 Paleo Project Challenge. Got a nagging little project that just requires a few days of concentrated effort to finish? Quit the excuses, and just get it done! That's the whole point of this. Whether it's research, artwork, a curation project, or whatever, anything is fair game.

Dave Hone has more over at Archosaur Musings. Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel have blogged about their own contribution. What will yours be?

Hello, Spinops!

In case you haven't yet noticed, there's a new horned dinosaur in town: Spinops sternbergorum, yet another example of the ceratopsians' incredible evolutionary radiation.

Spinops sternbergorum, as envisioned by Dmitry Bogdanov

This animal has special significance for me, because it is the first new dinosaur for which I have been senior author. In a lot of ways, that's a childhood dream coming true!

Best of all, it was a lot of fun to work with some respected colleagues. Michael Ryan (ceratopsian expert extraordinaire) and I enjoyed bouncing ideas off of each other (even if we haven't yet reached a consensus on epiparietal homology, as acknowledged in the paper), and Mark Loewen added another ceratopsian voice to the mix. Darren Tanke offered his historical perspective (particularly important for this specimen, which was found in 1916), and Dennis Braman's expertise in palynology was absolutely invaluable. All of us owe a huge debt to Paul Barret's efforts at the Natural History Museum (London), where the type material is held, as well as for his cladistic wizardry. Last but certainly not least, Mark Graham did a bang-up job with preparing the fossil. When I first saw the holotype parietal, it was upside down and embedded in plaster. Mark took this and made it beautiful!

The art was contributed by several different folks. Phil Hurst took some exceptionally high-quality photographs, and Lukas Panzarin rendered the bones with his usual finesse. Our first life restoration of Spinops was undertaken by Dmitry Bogdanov, and it deservedly has been shown widely in the press.

Speaking of art, our representation of Spinops is conservative. We don't know what the frill looked like to the outside of the big spikes, so it is quite possible that there were more than what illustrated. So to the paleoartists out there: make it as spiky as you want! Anything is possible (until we find more fossils that tell us otherwise).

The specimens of Spinops have a long and interesting history, which has been detailed elsewhere. So, I encourage you to check out Brian Switek's write-up at Dinosaur Tracking, an excellent story by John Mangels in Cleveland's Plain Dealer, a story in The Telegraph, the NHM's press page, the Cleveland Museum's press page, or my own museum's web site.

If you're looking for something completely different, check out The Gawker's take on Spinops. It's snarky and quite funny. Many folks have taken some offense at it, but I'm positively delighted to be featured amongst the celebrity gossip - the story is decidedly tongue-in-cheek!

Finally, if you're really interested in digging deeper, check out the original paper, published in Acta Palaeontologia Polonica. It's open access and free to read by anyone!

Citation: Farke, A. A., M. J. Ryan, P. M. Barrett, D. H. Tanke, D. R. Braman, M. A. Loewen, and M. R. Graham. 2011. A new centrosaurine from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and the evolution of parietal ornamentation in horned dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 56(4):691-702. doi:10.4202/app.2010.0121 [link to the original paper]

Observations on SVP