The Next Generation Science blog has just put up a guest post I wrote for them about the online reference management service Connotea.  Here’s an extract:

Surfing the web, you come across a great journal article that you don’t have time to read immediately or think might come in useful when you’re writing your next research paper. A few days later you try to find the abstract again, but where is it?! Buried in your web browser favourites menu? Scrawled on a piece of paper you’re sure you left right by the computer?

If you often have this problem, the social bookmarking website Connotea could be the answer. Connotea is a free online reference programme for scientists, researchers and clinicians. Connotea was created in 2004 by Nature Publishing Group, who decided “to take the Delicious model and add features that would be specifically useful to academics”, says Ian Mulvany, Product Development Manager in charge of Connotea.

Next Generation Science is a website dedicated to examining emerging internet technologies – such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and folksonomies (tagging) – and their impact on the scientific method, researchers and the general public.  Head over to their site to check out my guest post and other recent articles on open notebook science, the effect of the US economic stimulus on research funding and the efforts of companies that just don’t ‘get’ web 2.o.