As a Matter of Fact

Elsevier Introduces 2collab, a New Social Bookmarking Tool for Scientists
Free to use…free to share

Sharing information in an electronic environment will become even easier with the forthcoming introduction of 2collab, a new free collaborative research tool developed by Elsevier that stimulates dialog, debate and networking in the wider scientific community. Designed for users in academic, government and corporate settings, 2collab is a social bookmarking site where researchers can store and organize their favorite Internet resources – such as research articles, data, news, blogs, websites and more. Then, in private or public groups, users can decide to share their bookmarks with others. Members of groups can evaluate these resources (by rating bookmarks, tagging and adding comments), or add their own bookmarks.

What Is Social Bookmarking? Social bookmarking, a Web 2.0 social networking application, is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public website and tagging them with keywords so that other users can find them. These websites allow you to store bookmarks, add tags of your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as “public” or “private.” Visitors to the site can then search for resources by keyword, person or popularity and browse public bookmarks, tags and classification schemes. The philosophy underlying social bookmarking is that anyone can participate. Creators of bookmarks assign tags, resulting in a user-directed method of classifying information. Over time the community of users will develop a unique structure of keywords to define resources, enabling a “folksonomy” – a user generated taxonomy.

2collab will be closely integrated with Scopus and ScienceDirect and as such, will support users in many aspects of their workflow like networking with other experts in their specialist areas, finding and evaluating new research materials as a community, working together on analyzing information to discover new opportunities and solutions or getting peer feedback on research they have published.

For example if a researcher is writing an article with co-authors around the globe, he can store any bookmarks for related articles in 2collab so his colleagues can access them. These bookmarks can be tagged with keywords so they’re easy to find. And, best of all, users can start discussions by commenting on and rating these bookmarks. This makes collaboration more efficient and reduces long e-mail strings that can become too convoluted.

2collab has already progressed through three stages of user testing, from initial user-centered design research, to review by focus groups at concept stage and prototype user tests. Currently 2collab is in beta test phase with users at more than 30 Scopus and ScienceDirect Development Partners around the world. Commercial launch is planned for fall 2007.

Users at your institution can also participate in the 2collab beta test. Go to www.2collab.com to find out more.

To learn more about “social bookmarking” go to Wikipedia.org.
To learn more about “social networking” go to Wikipedia.org.