Project details

Our mission

We believe in a better science

Transparency, openness and knowledge sharing are emerging as core principles of the scientific process. Life Science Network (LSN) is meant to embrace these principles and help the community address coming challenges in scientific research.

At LSN, we believe many of these challenges can be addressed by combining the right kind of concepts and digital tools on one side, with incentives and policies on the other, that will all together result in a more open and efficient scientific process.

What we do

So what exactly is LSN? LSN is an internet platform for professional networking and sharing of information and knowledge in life sciences.

The platform integrates multiple functional modules. One of the modules is Jobs which features an easy to use application and recruiting system. Another is Protocols that helps improve reproducibly of scientific research. Other modules include Publications, Events and News & Views.

These modules are built on top of a directory of life science infrastructure, creating a system that enables scientists to create relationships between themselves, the infrastructure and the content. The result is a whole new experience when accessing information and an automated way of pooling together scientific output of organizations and their parts.

People behind LSN

LSN platform is operated by Life Science Network gGmbH, a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing science and supporting research.

The people behind the project are Alen Piljic, Aleksander Benjak and Aljosa Mohorovic. A full list of contributors can be seen here.

Are you interested in working with us? Get in touch by writing to [email protected].

Main features

Quick access to information

Life Science Network can be browsed without registration. You can also make use of the full-text search functionality without having to sign in. However, some features, such as upload of content, posting comments, recommending or rating, are only available to registered users.

Simple sign-up procedure

Fill one simple form and you are done. It is free! Now you can add information to your profile, upload your own content (jobs, events, news articles etc.), as well as give feedback on content posted by other members. Sign-up here.

User profiles

Add information to your profile. Filling accurate information about your past work experiences and your current work position will give you the possibility to connect the content you share with the workplaces defined in your profile. With information that best describes you and your research you can create a complete and attractive CV.

Institutional pages

Every institute, company, department or group has its own page within the network. You can add content to these pages, such as text or images to describe them to the scientific community and general public. On each of these pages you can access jobs, events, news articles, publications or protocols created by scientists working there.

Organisational structures

Explore organisational structures of institutes, universities and companies. Find out who is working in a particular department or group now and who used to work there in the past. See an example here.

Diverse content

Publications, protocols, events, jobs, news articles and commentaries, preprints, reviews, questions, event abstracts - all can be uploaded using simple forms. References and abstracts of research publications can also be imported from PubMed. Jobs module features a candidate recruiting system.

Recommendations, ratings, comments

Share your opinion about different types of content you find on the LSN platform by posting comments, recommending and rating. You can also post reviews of publications as part of our post-publication review feature. You can even review institutes, departments and research groups.

Report and feedback

Let us know what you think about the Life Science Network. Report problems and give us your opinion about the features and design. We will try to improve the network based on your feedback.

LSN structure and relations

Organisational structures

Organisational structures of research institutions can often be complicated: universities have faculties and centres, some institutes have departments and research groups, other have divisions, research sections, labs etc. Structuring this information is challenging and one of the most important goals of the LSN project, since we believe it would enable easier access and a more efficient search for information.

As a result, we created a system where not only researchers have personal profiles, but places where they work have pages as well. And this doesn't include only institutions, but also all organisational levels institutions might have (such as departments and research groups).

The system supports any number of sub-levels horizontally or vertically - it basically works for any kind of organisational structure. See an example here.

Linking content to institutional pages

Content at LSN can be connected to institutions and organisational levels. For publications, protocols, events, jobs and news articles the authors have the option of defining to which of their current or past work positions the content should be connected. If they choose a particular position, the content will be linked to the institution and organisational levels behind that position as well, making it easier for other scientists to find relevant information.

Example:
A postdoctoral researcher works at institute A, department B, group C. That user can upload content and link it to the "Postdoctoral researcher" position and the content will appear in the appropriate list of institute A, department B and group C.

Using this system, all content can be associated with the appropriate location. Research publications can be linked to groups, departments and institutes where the work originated. Protocols, for example, can be linked to research group pages as well, allowing group members to find them easily. Resource requests (questions) can be associated with a particular department or institute. Same is true for events and jobs - you can now go to any page in the structure and see which seminars or jobs openings are linked to that location.

Adding information to institutional pages

Just like researchers can add information to their personal profile, information can be added to profiles of institutions and their organisational levels as well. Typically, the user that first enters a new institution or level into the database, will get edit rights for that particular page. If, however, other users wish to have edit rights for those pages, they can send us a message using the Report or request form and ask for edit rights.

More complex structures

To support additional situations, such as when a research group moves from one location (research institute) to another, or when an organisational level has two parent institutions, we created a way of creating relationships between different levels in the network.

The consequence of creating such relationships is that the content associated with one level will be displayed in an appropriate way on the related level. There are two types of these relationships: one for situations when one level is created as ancestor of another level; the other for situations when two levels are actually the same. But keep in mind, creation of this type of relationships is restricted - to create a relationship between two levels, a user must have edit rights for both of them.

Different LSN modules

As explained before, the core of the LSN platform is a directory of life science infrastructure (universities, institutes, companies) and their corresponding internal structure such as departments, groups etc. Scientists and other users that join LSN can connect their profiles to structural nodes in the network (for example, a group or department in an institute, university or company) by defining their previous and current work positions.

However, registered users can also upload and share various types of content with the community through a number of different modules. Here we explain the different modules and current features.

Protocols

This module enables sharing of detailed experimental protocols and laboratory recipes. We believe that sharing of detailed research protocols can help scientists reproduce each other's experiments easier.

Protocols can be uploaded through one simple form. Images and documents can be attached to each protocol. Protocols can always be edited. The edit rights are assigned to the user who uploaded the protocol originally, but can be reassigned to another user if requested.

You can create different relations to each protocol (author or favorite). Depending on these relations, the protocol will appear under the appropriate tab on your profile. If you choose one or more positions through Author settings, the protocol will also appear on pages of institutions or organisational levels where you worked.

Protocols can be shown in the list of all protocols and among search results if the user chooses that option. It is possible not to expose the protocol in such a way, but the protocol will still be shown on user's profile.

Preprints

Preprints module is meant to serve as an archive of pre-publication manuscripts. The publication process often takes a long time due to numerous back-and-forth iterations between researchers, reviewers and journals. We think that releasing manuscripts prior to submission to a journal would reduce the time required for publication, as the authors could improve the manuscript based on community feedback. The community could also suggest where the work is most suited to be published.

Basic preprints features are identical to those for protocols. Like all other content, preprints can be recommended and commented, but also rated in three categories.

News & Views

We developed the News & Views module to give every scientist the possibility to easily post news articles, highlights or commentaries. Often, articles describing break-through research are written by press officers in collaboration with scientists. LSN now offers a platform where those articles can be shared and more easily discovered by everyone.

News articles are submitted through one simple form, can have images and documents attached, and must have a cover image. Before they are shown on the Home page, news articles have to be approved by us.

Unlike protocols or preprints, news article can only have one author. The author can choose to link the article to his work position (and thereby to institution, department or group where the author works) through the edit form. News articles will then automatically appear in the News & Views section of those institutional pages.

Like other content, news articles and commentaries can be recommended, commented and shared in social media.

Non-academic or commercial articles, as well as promoted articles, are a payed service.

Questions

Q&A module is not meant only as a replacement for a classical forum. Rather, due to integration with the network of institutions and their organisational levels, it can also serve as a communication channel for requests and inquiries intended to be exposed only at a particular physical location.

When a question is uploaded, the author can choose to expose it on the main list page (for questions addressing all members of the network), or not. Questions which are not exposed on the main list page will be shown on institutional, departmental or group pages, if the author linked the question to the appropriate work position. The consequence is that, especially for resource requests, those requests can now be seen by the community in the physical proximity which is likely to provide the resource.

Like news articles, questions can have only one author and linking question to work positions is done through the edit form.

Events

Similar to questions, events also profit from integration with the core LSN structure of institutions and their organisational levels. The module serves not only for promoting conferences or workshops, but also works well with seminars and webinars.

When users from an institution with a complex organisational structure post their seminars and connect them to their work positions, seminars are directly linked correctly to all institutional sub-levels where they work. They can then go to each of this levels and see the upcoming or past seminars by scientists working there or follow the location to get automatically notified when new events taking place at that location are added to the database.

As part of the event, images and documents can be uploaded. Additionally, abstracts can be uploaded as separate objects and linked to the event to allow sharing of posters and presentation materials. We can also import all abstracts for an event at once if you send us a file with all the information.

Scientists can create various types of relations to events (organiser, speaker, participant or favorite) which will place the event under the appropriate tab on their profile.

Commenting and recommending of events is also enabled. Events can be promoted to ensure the highest possible visibility. Non-academic or commercial events, as well as promoted events, are a payed service.

Post-publication review

With the goal to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated, and as an alternative to current metrics, we devised several mechanisms which allow LSN members to express their opinion about published research.

Recommendations

Like all the other content, publications can be recommended. This is the easiest way to contribute. Recommendations are used to notify other users (your followers, publication authors and users that marked the publication as their favorite) that you recommended that publication. All recommendations are used to calculate a recommendation score intended to indicate the impact of a publication.

Ratings

As a way to address the question of quality of published research, we developed a rating feature. Publications can be rated in three different categories:

• Publication quality - Is the manuscript well written and language clear? What is the quality of figures and tables? Are the results interpreted correctly and the conclusions justified?
• Technical soundness - Are the chosen methods appropriate to address the question under investigation? Are the experimental procedures described well enough to be replicated? Are the analyses technically sound?
• Scientific impact - Is the publication describing new and valuable findings with potentially great and broad impact?

Rating of only one or two categories is possible and ratings are reversible. To remove a rating, one simply needs to rescale the previously submitted rating to 0 and click Rate. The scale is 1-9, with 1 being the rating for the worst possible publication, and 9 for the best. Anyone can submit a publication rating and ratings are anonymous.

Comments

Users wishing to elaborate their rating, can also post comments. This is a way to express opinion about the publications, or to ask authors a question about the publication. Authors of the publications (displayed in the Authors block) will receive a notification when a comment is posted. Publications can be commented non-anonymously (users that are signed in) or anonymously (unregistered visitors or registered members that do not wish to reveal their identity).

Reviews

Finally, more elaborate reviews can also be submitted. The review can contain only text, but it is also possible to upload images and attach documents to each review. Reviewers can also rate publications using our three-category rating system. However, the ratings incorporated into the review are not anonymous like community ratings and a separate average is calculated from reviewers' ratings. Reviews are also suitable for sharing of journal club conclusions. Like other content, they are subject to recommendations and can be commented.

Institution review

LSN contains a directory of life science institutions, universities, companies as well as their departments, groups and other organizational levels. In a single word we call these "nodes". Similar to publications, there are different review features you can use to share your opinion about a particular node (e.g. an institute, department or group):

• anonymous and non-anonymous commenting
• recommendations
• anonymous rating in three different categories
• non-anonymous review - a combination of text and numerical ratings

The three rating categories are:

• Working conditions - Here you need to evaluate how it is to work at the node you are reviewing. For instance, is the funding sufficient and necessary equipment available? What is the work culture and ethics? Also, are there training, education and other opportunities for personal development?
• Work-life balance - Is the work balanced well with leisure and other activities?
• Direction & leadership - How would you assess the direction the management is taking? Is work that is being performed cutting edge or not? What is the impact on community and society?

Additionally, you can assess further aspects and comment on them in the review. For instance, how would you estimate productivity and work efficiency? Is administrative support good? Are you satisfied with the salary and benefits? What are the chances for career advancement and future perspective. You may also comment if you haven't worked at the node you are reviewing, but collaborated with the people working there, and share your experiences.

Researcher statistics

On the profile page of the members of our network you can see their personal statistics.

The first number is the Contribution score. This score is intended to indicate how much a user contributed to the LSN network. When you upload content, for instance a protocol, a preprint or a news article, you get for each uploaded item n + n*D points, where n=basic number of points that depends on each module, while D=positive recommendations-negative recommendations and D>=0. n varies between different modules (e.g. for protocols currently n=10, for reviews n=20 and so on). Over time, n will be tweaked in agreement with community feedback. Other activities, such as commenting, will eventually also be added to the Contribution score.

The Publication average is the average of all votes in all three rating categories for publications authored by the scientist. Non-rated publications are not taken into account when calculating the average. The number of rated publications is indicated in the brackets behind the average. Currently, the average is calculated using only community ratings.

Profile views number indicates how many times have other users and visitors viewed a member's profile page.

LSN is nonprofit

The LSN platform is operated by Life Science Network gGmbH, a non-profit organisation based in Heidelberg, Germany.

Our organisation engages in business activities similar to other enterprises. However, unlike ordinary companies, we are committed to reuse the profits exclusively in a way that benefits researchers and science, all while in agreement with guidelines for non-profit enterprises and the German tax authorities.

What does it means in reality? It means that once our bills are paid (development costs, running costs, hosting etc.), the money left on our account actually belongs to you, the members of our network. In fact, as more members join and LSN increases in popularity, the more likely it is we will earn enough to have profits that can be used to support you and your research.

Rules about allocation of these funds and the precise nature of our support is still not defined. In case you have suggestions, drop us a line at [email protected].

You can support the Life Science Network project by making a donation, either through a direct bank transfer, or by using PayPal. You can find more information about donating here.

For more information about Life Science Network, contact us at [email protected].