In 1996 I helped the Australian Antarctic Division discover and document its spatial (map-related) data. I remember walking down long corridors in their Hobart offices and being regaled by stories of brave (crazy?) scientists enduring successive winters. Each scientist had their own office and I notice most doors were kept shut. I popped in to see a seal scientist and asked about his spatial data. He was a giant, hairy man—reminded me of a seal-elephant. In two strides he was in front on his map cabinet, lifted the lid about 5cm and whipped out a single map. There was at least another 50 maps inside the cabinet and when I asked about the others he assured me that I needn’t worry.

The location of seal colonies and sitings were marked on his map. It turns out that lichen is important to seals so lichen locations were also marked.

My next visit was to the lichen scientist two doors down the corridor. He was more forthcoming with his data. The lichen guy had also made careful note of seal locations whenever he was in the field. “Do you collaborate with the seal guy down the hall?”, I asked. “Nup, we have little in common.”

I remembered this incident while reading Nancy White’s post about the exciting new trial Nature is conducting to test the usefulness of public peer review. If successful we might see articles published faster and in a more transparent fashion. Nancy makes the following observation:

One of the barriers I’ve noticed to knowledge sharing is “publish or perish.” The practice of very carefully sharing (or not at all) early data prior to publication has some unintended consequences. It slows down collaboration and potentially, stifles innovation. It creates a competitive scientific market where sometimes we need a collaborative one. The journal peer review process is intended to create rigor and critical thinking so we aren’t all shammed by a fakester. But it also create firewalls between information and the public.

I’m working with two scientific organisations at the moment and in both cases the ‘publish or perish’ mentality doesn’t stifle collaboration entirely, it just ensures scientists don’t collaborate with their colleagues because they compete with them for recognition and promotions. Collaborators come from other organisations, and better yet, overseas and far away.