Software offers an online science space

Feb 4 2010 by Iain Laing, The Journal

Inkspot Science chief operating officer Joanna Berry said: “The report that we received from Marketwise Strategies added huge value to the project by supplying us with a meaningful analysis of the statistics.

“It’s a huge change from knowing the statistics to understanding what they mean.

“Because Marketwise Strategies asked the right questions to the right people, we discovered for example that scientists don’t like the word ‘blog’, preferring instead to use the term ‘lab notebook’.

“Something that would seem so small is fundamentally important to us to help engage those scientists into using the software.

“We can now identify growing interest and we are ready to produce a public site. We hope to develop it further as a publishing platform that can be applied to other (non-science) sectors.”

The software is also aimed at promoting scientific studies and sharing analysis worldwide by unlocking research so that more people can benefit from the work that scientists are doing.

Following the feedback of a testing period, the launch of the software in the North East will enable a cultural shift among scientists which could benefit research around the world.