Dear colleagues, my working paper dealing with the question "Cyberscience 2.0 or 1.2? The Web 2.0 and Science" has just appeared: http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ita-manuscript/ita_09_02.pdf It is written in German though. I am working on an English version, the preliminary abstract reads: Author: Michael Nentwich Title: Cyberscience 2.0 or 1.2? Web 2.0 and Science Keywords: Cyberscience, Web 2.0, social media, Twitter, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, social bookmarking, social tagging Abstract: This contribution focuses on the possible impact of Web 2.0 on science and research. In the introduction, I describe the notions "Cyberscience" and "Web 2.0" and their relation to each other. In the main part, I analyse typical Web 2.0 services from the perspective of use in academia: social network services, virtual worlds, Wikipedia, (micro-)blogging and social tagging. On this basis I ask the question how functional Web 2.0 tools would be for research praxis and which potential consequences of their hypothetical universal usage we may have to expect. I come to a cautious and reserved conclusion: Given the early stage of usage - many services only exist for less than three years and are not fully discovered by scientists - an assessment of the potentials is barely feasible. However, there are a few weighty arguments that speak against rapid diffusion (lack of time, of incentives, low benefit expectations etc.). While the first steps on the path of developing cyberscience further have been taken, the potential impact on science seem not to go beyond what has already been discussed in advance of the Web 2.0 hype. Using the software jargon, Web 2.0 lets us expect an "update to Cyberscience 1.2", rather than a "new release to Cyberscience 2.0". If you happen to work on this issue, too, I am looking forward to your feedback or any hints to published articles on that matter. Many thanks in advance! Best wishes, Michael Nentwich *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* PD Dr. Michael NENTWICH Director Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1030 Vienna, Strohgasse 45/5 Tel. +43 1 51581 6583 Fax. +43 1 7109883 mailto:mnent@oeaw.ac.at Personal homepage: http://eiop.or.at/mn/ Institute: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail, thank you! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++