Notes from the Biomass

Using Wikis to share information within a research group or in a collaboration becomes more and more frequent, even if many scientists haven't heard much of Wikis beyond the 'pedia. Openwetware is another endeavour by several groups to exchange information on ongoing projects and protocols.
However, it is different in many respects in that there is no formal collaboration between the participating labs, yet all pages are open to everyone under a Creative Common License.

From their current boiler plate:
OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology. OWW provides a place for labs, individuals, and groups to organize their own information and collaborate with others easily and efficiently. In the process, we hope that OWW will not only lead to greater collaboration between member groups, but also provide a useful information portal to our colleagues, and ultimately the rest of the world.

Most of current members are labs from the MIT and the UT Austin;Bioinformaticians will probably have heard of Chris Burge's lab. Others are invited to join which is as easy as sending an email. As far as I can see, there is no particular focus of research groups, but synthetic biology seems much discussed and technological development is a more of a focus then intricate details of well studied fields of biology. It does not appear that openwetware is widely publicized currently - only the del.icio.us link of a member pointed me to the site. It's bold step to make all the material available, even if concrete research results must cannot be publized yet. Let's hope the site goes well and other groups follow up on making research more transparent.