The problem with the JSUR model, and the nature of discovery

I expect JSUR will be a great way to comment on methods and techniques. Indeed it will codify a trend that has been going on for some time: public protocol knowledge sharing. Many sites like openwetware, seqanswers or the UC Davis bioinformatics wiki have been doing this for a while. Not to mention a plethora of blogs. Scientists are willing to share their experience with working protocols and procedures, and if this sharing of knowledge can be now monetized to that all-important coin of academia, the peer-reviewed publication, all the better.

So where is the problem? The problem lies with discovery, and credit given towards it. It would be very hard to get anyone to share awkward, unexpected or yet-uninterpreted results. First, as I said, no one wants to look like an idiot. Second, unexpected or yet uninterpreted results are often viewed as a precursor to yet another avenue of exploration. A scientist would rather pursue that avenue, with the hope of the actual meaningful discovery occurring in the lab. At most, there will be a consultation with a handful of trusted colleagues in a closed forum. If the results are made public, someone else might take the published unexpected and uninterpreted results, interpret them using complementary knowledge gained in their lab, and publish them as a bona-fide research paper. The scientist who catalyzed the research paper with his JSUR publication receives, at best, secondary credit. The story of Rosalind Franklin’s under-appreciated contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA comes to mind. Watson and Crick used the X-ray diffraction patterns generated by Franklin to solve the three dimensional structure of the DNA molecule. Yet she was not given a co-authorship on the paper. (And she did not even make the results public, they were shared without her knowledge.) Unexpected results are viewed either as an opportunity or an embarrassment, and given the competitive nature of science, no on wants to advertise either: the first due to the fear of getting scooped, the second for fear of soiling a reputation. I expect JSUR would have a harder time filling in the odd-results niche, but I hope I am wrong.

But if you have protocols you are willing to share…what are you waiting for? Get those old lab notebooks, 00README files, forum posts and start editing them to a paper. You are sitting on a goldmine of publishable data and you did not even realize it.