Ever since Tim Berners-Lee first hyperlinked documents so CERN colleagues could share information and navigate networked resources, the Internet community has not looked back. Now, multimedia Web browsers allow rich text, images, sound files, video clips, and scientific data such as chemical spectra, astronomic measurements, molecular structures, and more, to be manipulated online in real-time by scientists across the globe. Smart companies and institutes have latched on to the need to organise the vast oceans of data and they are now introducing the human element to the Web - a sense of communication, commitment…community.
The idea of virtual communities has grown parallel to the development of the net and for the scientist who wants to be informed, to communicate and to be involved, a living community is becoming essential. One such virtual community serves almost half a million scientists in the biomedical arena - BioMedNet.
BioMedNet was introduced commercially in March 1996 by Vitek Tracz head of the Current Science Group. BioMedNet would not only provide easier access to the Current Science journals for members but by producing value-added information the site hoped to attract a degree of loyalty from visitors that is simply not available to a conventional Web site. 'The principle was to re-examine the whole purpose of communication,' explains Andrew Trotman a computer scientist involved in setting up BMN, 'Academic papers act as a communication forum between authors and readers but with the Internet it became possible to alter the core of this mechanism by bringing people together to establish a community.'
Since that time, BioMedNet has thrived. Membership is well over 400,000 and what began as an interface to various biomedical journals now gives members an information-rich Web site which can fulfil almost all their information needs without a visit to the library. BioMedNet serves up databases, such as the 'Macromolecular Structures Database' and a job exchange.
One of the most fabled online resources for biomedical scientists has always been Medline. BMN provides a value-assessed front-end to the service that allows references to be searched in more potently than is possible with a basic Medline search tool and is annotated critically by Current Opinion experts. Various electronic forums and virtual conferences add yet more interactive content to the BioMedNet Web site.
One aspect of BMN that helps bring the virtual community together is the members' flagship magazine - or Webzine - HMSBeagle. The Beagle provides an informative interface to BMN with news updated daily, feature articles from scientists and expert journalists and links to essential information elsewhere on the Web together with a searchable database of reviewed sites. This is much more than an extension of the traditional society newsletter, not least because of a currency inaccessible to a monthly or even yearly print publication.
One can begin to see that a virtual community is more than a simple portal to information. Online science communities do share many of the traits of conventional scientific societies: members can hear about jobs, access a library and databases, read their inhouse magazine and most importantly they all share an interest in their subject. There is one major difference - membership is in no way parochial, members can join and feel loyalty to their club from Clacton to Katmandu with no qualms.
The learned societies are not lying down to die though. While some may have come late to the Web, their massive resources are helping create some significant sites. PhysicsWeb is the UK's Institute of Physics own Web community, and has, in fact, been running since Christmas 1997, making it something of an old-hand on the Web. The resources available to the community include substantial news reports with direct links to research papers. Members can read the IOP's 'inhouse' magazine Physics World, which provides them with almost instant access and a guaranteed personal copy that no one can pilfer.
According to Web Editor Paul Guinnessy, there are two main long-term goals for PhysicsWeb. 'One,' he explains, 'is to create a global virtual community for physicists, the other is to provide benefits to members of the Institute of Physics.' This gives PhysicsWeb a slightly different philosophy to common or garden Web portals, for example, IOP member services will soon be available with the click of a button on PhysicsWeb, which will allow members to view a members directory, read electronic journals and deal with most of their membership queries online.
The new virtual science clubs might partially displace societies but professional accreditation, promoting the teaching of a subject, lobbying governments on behalf of members, providing social services, organising public lectures will for some time to come remain the learned society forte. The persistence of the learned society paradigm might in fact hinge on this aspect of membership because all other needs can be catered for elsewhere.
According to Guinnessy, "Virtual communities provide an opportunity and a threat to some socieities. For example, the number of benefits for an international member of a society are pretty limited except for accreditation as they cannot attend meetings held in the host country.' Becoming a member of a Web-aware society is more attractive, especially with the international acceptance of some qualifications but this could mean losing national members to more Web-centric societies from abroad. Guinnessy foresees the merging of national societies into larger, international organisations with regions lacking a society becoming connected to colleagues abroad through the net.
PhysicsWeb categorises external information sources under various headings from education and media to companies and institutions by way of references and museums, which fulfils the portal concept for this Web community. While, the site's job section PhysicsJobs provides same-day access to the latest posts, studentships and courses in physics, engineering, materials and computing that will appear in the IOP publication Physics World. Indeed, according to Guinnessy, one job posting elicited three CV submissions from prospective candidates within two hours of going online. There's nothing like getting a job referral to boost a sense of loyalty with a Web community. Guinnessy himself even heard about the vacancy for his present post through PhysicsJobs.
Within PhysicsWeb, is PhysicsNet a free on-line buyers guide to manufacturers and suppliers of physics-related products and services. The section provides a comprehensive directory of more than 200 companies. They can all be searched by product category and company name. Also now incorporated within PhysicsWeb is The Internet Pilot TO Physics (TIPTOP) which was born out of academia in 1996 and not only provides access to additional resources but a virtual Java-based laboratory through which various physics experiments can be reviewed and demonstrated. Taken as a whole the IOP site has had well over eleven million hits since 1996.
'Personally, I see PhysicsWeb's goal to be the number one site for physics in the world. In terms of news, events, and links, it has already met those expectations,' enthuses Guinnessy, 'It will develop to be more than a portal to information and resources as we add more interactive content.'
Read on in Part 2