'Social' Science

Martin Fenner from Germany's Hannover Medical School Cancer Center tells the Raleigh, NC-based News & Observer about his efforts to make science more social. The main issue, Fenner says, is that scientists have few incentives for that kind of work. "Researchers are valued by their publications and grants, and other contributions to science — producing research data, communicating science, teaching, et cetera — usually fall under the table," he says. Fenner is working on two initiatives, Open Researcher and Contributor ID, or ORCID, and Altmetrics, both of which aim to change that. ORCID assigns researchers a number to make identifying their research contributions easier, while Altmetrics measures the impact of blog posts, tweets, and more. "A more networked science makes a lot of sense for science as a whole, but at least initially, offers little extra value to the individual researcher," Fenner says. "This makes change difficult."