Conversations with seven Science 2.0 pioneers.

Surely you’ve noticed: The scientific community is undergoing a research-and-data-sharing sea change. Perhaps slower to take to Web-based dissemination than some professions, science—the endeavor for which the World Wide Web was developed—has gradually been adopting new online methods for distributing knowledge. Some say the changes could accelerate scientific progress.

From open-access journals to research-review blogs, from collaboration by wiki to epidemiology by Blackberry, networked knowledge has made more science more accessible more quickly and to more people around the globe than could have been imagined 20 years ago.

And it’s not just new media businesses that are pioneering the Science 2.0 movement. Traditional scientific journals are part of this social evolution too, innovating ways to engage scientists online and enable global collaboration and conversation. Even the 187-year-old Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences has joined the digital age. The Academy now permits free public access to selected online content and has digitized every volume dating back to 1823.

Meet the Science 2.0 Pioneers:
• Harold Varmus, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, Public Library of Science
• Adam Bly, Founder & CEO, Seed Media Group
• James Boyle, Founding Member, Board of Directors, Creative Commons
• Anurag Acharya,Founding Engineer, Google Scholar
• Timo Hannay, Publishing Director, Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group
• John Wilbanks,Executive Director, Science Commons
• Stewart Wills, Editorial Director, Web & New Media, Science Magazine.

Read more in The New York Academy of Sciences