Science 2.0 fave Cam Neylon has some thoughts from a recent conference panel, namely that the thought process did not go beyond the usual "Institutions should do X" stuff. Obviously we all agree, there would be no Science 2.0 if we waited for the NSF or a university or bloggers to create it.
The discussion about incentives has to move on. Saying that “institutions should do X” or “funders should do Y” gets us nowhere. Understanding what we can do together with funders and institutions and other communities to take the online agenda forward and understanding what the constraints are is where we need to go. The discussion showed that both institutions and funders know that they need what the community of online scientists can do. They don’t know how to go about it, and they don’t even know very much what we are doing, but they want to know.
There is an entrenched mentality in scientists, institutions and science communicators also. Good luck getting someone who works for Brand X big media company to cooperate on events or outreach efforts and universities are downright impossible; people have their own fiefdoms and they want to protect them. I can't describe how many times I have tried to get interns from UC Davis to work for Science 2.0 - a paying gig not for free. Nothing. What worked? CraigsList.
It is easy to say that incentives need to change. But incentives don’t drop from heaven. Incentives are created within communities and they become meaningful when they are linked to the interests of stakeholders with resources.
Wisdom.
