OpenWetWare:Why join?

This document is a work in progress to describe the advantages of using a wiki as an information repository and collaborative space for institute research labs. The goal of the document should be to provide both pros and cons to better enable new labs to decide whether they would like to participate.

Pros

Persistant Information

Much "lore" and information is lost when lab memebers leave (problem given high turnover rate of academic labs), the wiki provides a low-barrier of entry method for lab members to contribute that information to a database which will persist after they leave the lab.

Dynamic Information

The ease of wiki linking enables much more rich documents and information than is availble in static documents. For instance can link out to informative pages about particular words in the wiki, enabling someone reading the protocol who doesn't understand a concept to quickly locate a reliable, accurate definition.

Collaboration

By providing a common space for people to post information about thier work, graduate students are more likely to be aware of the work going on in other labs locally. It seems like this will improve the likelihood of collaboration.

Related Information

• other wikis