Posted by s.hettrick on 18 June 2013 - 10:25am

Mozilla Science Lab is a new initiative that will help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science’s future. We're happy to announce that our friends at Software Carpentry are an important part of the Science Lab who will be exploring what digital literacy means for scientific researchers and how these digital skills can further aid their work.

A statement from Mozilla describes the purpose of the Science Lab and echoes many of our thoughts on the openness of science:

Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the analogue age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around papers, for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible.

The Science Lab will foster dialog between the open web community and researchers to tackle this challenge. Together they’ll share ideas, tools, and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research more agile and collaborative.

To find out more about the Mozilla Science Lab, read the announcement.