the worries that may arise are more related to external "reviewers" than on my own. I can stand for every article, thesis, note etc. that I have written without hesitating. Unfortunately, Internet-based discussion forums are still seen as not reliable to some senior and junior researchers as well. It is based on the same discussion as to damn Wikipedia at all without any reflexion of the system, methods and content. I think it would be very important to bridge the remaining gaps here. Why is a workshop at a conference where people discuss subjects and write papers more reliable and accepted than an Internet-based version? A matter worth of being discussed :)

interesting point. actually, i was thinking about something similar the last days. There already exist citation formats for Tweets so citing discussions in RG should not be a problem per se. One suggestion could be to include a footnote reference to the topic via its URL (that can be seen as kind of a Permalink if i am not mistaken). However, I would not build my whole argumentation on the discussion going on here. Nonetheless, you could argue for the importance of some issues and underpin them with other sources and references. If the link is really acting as a Permalink, then the all contributors can instantly be seen and acknowledging them is a automatic side-effect.

Formally, this should be less or a problem (even petter if links are permanent, which I would hope for). But is this really a 'personal conversation'? And isn't is the case that Science 2.0 is exactly asking for incorporating such discussions into your research 'reports'? In other words, does anybody believe that the 'rare thinking', as Roman calls it above, is becoming common understanding?

Another line of discussion: following Thomas's second statement - you would add references etc. around -, when would you leave a discussion on ResearchGate or elsewhere and start building another argumentation around? Why shouldn't this also happen as part of the original discussion thread? Any 'worries'?

the worries that may arise are more related to external "reviewers" than on my own. I can stand for every article, thesis, note etc. that I have written without hesitating. Unfortunately, Internet-based discussion forums are still seen as not reliable to some senior and junior researchers as well. It is based on the same discussion as to damn Wikipedia at all without any reflexion of the system, methods and content. I think it would be very important to bridge the remaining gaps here. Why is a workshop at a conference where people discuss subjects and write papers more reliable and accepted than an Internet-based version? A matter worth of being discussed :)

Excellent point. Would you post this question on RG? I would certainly follow ;-)

Please help yourself ;)

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_a_workshop_at_a_conference_where_people_discuss_subjects_and_write_papers_more_reliable_and_acceptable_than_an_Internet-based_version

I will do mention LinkedIn in my next publiction, as a reference

@Muhammad: interesting, will you refer to LinkedIn in general or to a particular discussion? If the latter is the case, how to you incorporate the results? Have you been involved in that discussion yourself?

Why not. The Manual of the American Psychological Association has descriptions of how to cite materials from the Internet, they just need to be adapted for ResearchGate contributions. Because contributions are openly accessible there won't be a problem formally.

Absolutely, as said above, I (and apparently also others) believe that technically this is well possible. The remaining questions are:

1) Will you do it?

2) If so, why and how? - where the 'how' is rather asking for the conceptual approach of citing own arguments, those of others, a complete thread, or expanding the initial thoughts of the discussion. If expanding, why should I do in (maybe with a few co-authors) in a publication and not in the initial discussion on e.g. RG?

Any additional opinions?

No.

1) Yes!

2) I would cite, as you've posed it, the discussion or others' arguments in order to illustrate a point of view. Then I would expand those views and look for literature support. In fact, most of the RG discussions I've visited lack literature support and are mostly personal opinions.

Got curious on how to cite these discussions using APA style, so I googled it:

"Online Forums, Discussion Lists, or Newsgroups:

Messages posted by users on forums, discussion lists, and newsgroups should follow the basic structure for citing an online document. When possible, use the posters real name starting with the last name and followed by a first initial. If this is not possible, list the author's online screen name. You should also include the exact date that the message was posted."

Is that acceptable to cite online forum ? What will be written in the reference list? any format or example of the citation and the bibliography.

Sorry, I should have provided the website I used: http://psychology.about.com/od/apastyle/p/electronic.htm. There you can find an example:

Leptkin, J. L. (2006, November 16). Study tips for psychology students [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://groups.psychelp.com/forums/messages/48382.html

For more details, check out APA style blog. I've just found how to cite Facebook and Twiter: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/10/how-to-cite-twitter-and-facebook-part-ii.html.

Thanks Helia.

To me, it is fully acceptable to cite an on-line forum; in some cases it might even get obligatory. If you would, for example, start discussing a novel topic in a forum, you should pay credit to everybody involved in the chat. If not everybody who participated in the initial discussion participated in writing a related paper, his/her contribution should still be explicitly mentioned.

The notion of science 2.0 also suggests to reveal early research notes which let to some research contribution, and (as far as I understand) forum discussions would fall into this category It might go too far here, but if we consider that the whole approach of publishing scientific outcomes will completely change over the next few years, such cases might even get common - the publication of 'manuscripts' might vanish.

I'm highly unlikely to cite a discussion thread in print. In most cases, the posts in such forums are less coherent than papers that have the advantage of peer review. I wonder, too, about long-term archiving. Social/professional networking sites come and go; today's FB posts and tweets may disappear in the future.

I can imagine that some discussions related to some fields may be worth citing and preserving, but I've seen few (at least to date) that would be applicable to my own research.

Good point. Times might change, but we are not really there yet.

Hello, again! I also think that this "referencing issue" depends on several things: (i) the quality of the discussion, i.e, the contributions of the participants; and (ii) the relevance of that discussion in my own research work.

As my research focus on teaching and learning, I guess it is easy for me to see the usefulness of these discussions.

What if I'm studying "learning to be a researcher" as a social practice in an online environment?

Thanks Dr. Prabhat Kumar Pankaj for the perfect argument "If we see how much time an intellect spend on social blogging or internet based social interactions, its very high now-a-days", this really gives a clear indications that things change already and that questions such as this one should be discussed. It also nicely complements the previous statement about recent tool support and future requirements in this area. I more and more believe that we will see novel platforms soon, similar to what is currently happening in enterprise social networks.

I am curious as to how you define Science 2.0. In my field of Human Resources and Recruitment//Talent, we described Recruitment 2.0 as integrating technology and online candidate data sources - the move away from traditional paper based processes. We began describing this 4-5 years ago. Current thinking and activity has many organisations moving to Recruitment 3.0 - an interactive world where everyone is a potential candidate and Big Data comes in to play.

Now, how might I show this, in the context of the original question? I would cite as a reference one of the highly respected online publications (which includes a comments and forum facility attached to every article), ERE.net. This has never been a print publication, yet is acknowledged as THE publication for informed opinion, original writing and research in the industry.

My friend and colleague, Matthew Jeffery, has written a series for ERE.net. This is a sampling from the article.

Recruitment 4.0: Crowdsourcing, Gamification, Recruitment as a Profit Center, … and the Death of Recruitment Agencies!

by Matthew Jeffery Aug 10, 2011, ERE.NET

http://www.ere.net/2011/08/10/recruitment-4-0-crowdsourcing-gamification-recruitment-as-a-profit-center-and-the-death-of-recruitment-agencies/

"Recruitment 1.0 encompasses traditional recruiting over a huge timeline, including good old-fashioned fax machines, print advertising, (post, spray ,and pray), and Rolodexes moving into traditional ATSs. Recruiters more focused on processes than end results. The basic any-bum-on-any-seat philosophy.

Recruitment 2.0 saw the move onto online and using technology for recruitment purposes, including the advent of online job boards & online CV searches. While the technology moved forward, the traditional methodology of 1.0 was prevalent, including online post, spray, and pray candidate attraction (aka the recruitment lottery of let’s hope the right-ish person looks at the online advertisement, at the right time and feels willing to go to the effort to apply).

The beating heart of 3.0 is the non-active/passive individual and a focus on “best talent” and building predictable talent pipelines. In addition, the philosophy of “everyone is a potential candidate so engage them” is central. 3.0 takes us into building engaged, two-way, free-conversation based, transparent communities. "

My conclusion: Yes I would use an cite sources of information from online publications, information sites and online forums.

@Alan: Thanks for your answer and the excursion into the 2.0 topic.

As far as I am concerned, Science 2.0 is a shift in approach - from closed 'in-house' research from which results eventually get presented/published in workshops, conferences and journals, to the sharing and joint discussion of early ideas, notes, data, experiments and any other intermediate outcomes. In such a context, it would perfectly make sense to refer to discussion thready informs and the like. Opposed to many others, which consider the notion of 'cyder-infrastructure' as a synonym for Science 2.0, I see it only as the part which provides the enabling technology, including social media etc. For me, Science 2.0 adds also the network of individual researches and research organization, as well as governance models, ethical codes and the like.

If I got you right, this would be somewhat comparable to your notion of Requirement 3.0. Thinking this further, Science 3.0 would - and again this is a personal opinion - include more automated processes, i.e. some form of intelligence which suggests people some inter linkages between works of other groups, possible research questions, and supports the identification of possible connections. This would be the move from an approach in which human are the main actors to an increased support by artificial intelligence, i.e. machines. Trying to draw the parallel to the field of human resources and recruitment, this would mean some (hopefully smart) way of informing organizations about potential future employees based on their profile etc., as well as supporting job seekers in finding fitting positions, both in terms of hard criteria (such as required experience and expert knowledge) and soft criteria (including for example organizational style, work-life balance or location).

This is now really moving away from the original question, but anyway, something worth to discuss!

Short add on the my answer above:

In order to clearly distinguish the discussions, I just launched another question on the definition of Science 2.0 here: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_would_you_define_Science_20_and_what_do_you_see_as_the_3_mostly_required_Science_20_services#share

For those interested in that topic, please use the new thread from now on.

HI Sven

Thanks for your response and for interpreting my ramblings in a new way. The new stream is certainly interesting as well.

To reprise, I do believe that the interaction afforded by 2.0 and the various communication and resource channels does broaden the reach of scientific endeavour. To me, it is about collaboration - and the new comms tools that enable that. The Data and information found online is no less valid than from other methods, provided that context and references are solid.

Very good point that such data is "no less valid than from other methods". At the first glance, it might just get more difficult to evaluate 'validity', but ultimately, it is not. Anything that is publicly available, including current research papers, needs to be evaluated and put into context! It is just that some more of the required information becomes visible in Anything 2.0... In this sense, we seem to progress, but still, we face enormous heterogeneity and disconnectedness between contributions, contributors, information flows etc. I am quite exited to see where this is leading us...

Sven: If you find someone has said something better than you could, and you want to use those words, then you are obliged to cite that person. Here is an example from the draft of my book:

QUOTE My correspondent Peter Smetaniuk advises research students “not to be afraid of far-fetched hunches they may have – the whole idea is to 'test' these hunches empirically.” Peter Smetaniuk. ResearchGate Public communication. 2012-6-5.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_should_supervisors_tell_their_research_students UNQUOTE

Note that I had to invent the phrase "Public communication" to contrast with E-mail (and ResearchGate mail) which is of course a "Private Communication". (Remember that a reader, referee or examiner merely has to Google Peter's text to prove that he wrote it first -- it really is Public!)

Will the Google staff be prepared to assure us that these discussions will be indexed 50 years from now?

The last few answers take an interesting direction. If we increasingly reply on resources on the Web, shouldn't we all worry about the curation of that information? This is certainly a wide topic, but thinking about references to on-line articles, discussions and data - which is a prominent trend - we might get in trouble once the Big Data bubble explodes... and this is not so unlikely!

It would be prudent that if you are citing and online source to do a 'print to PDF' and keep it in your collection. At least you will have a copy even it it later vanishes from the web. This happened to me when I was PhD student and was thankful that I had done so as the source was a unique one! Ofcourse that doesn't help the later readers of your work. The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine can also be a life saver in finding vanished web content but it is limited in scope.

It would also be helpful if RG records the status of answers and recommendations carefully, meaning:

- the name of the replier/ recommender

- the replier's/recommender's position and the field of expertise, e.g., John (Full professor of Mathematics,... or their number of citations or things like that.

Because they change or may get removed later on.

Recommenders play the role of reviewers who endorse the reply.