On 2016 Sep 04, Egon Willighagen commented:

This paper raises a number of interesting points about contemporary research. The choice of word "selfies" is a bit misleading, IMHO, particularly because the article also discusses the internet.

The problem of selfies is partly because the liberal ideas that research is a free market where researchers have to sell their research and compete for funding. Indeed, I was trained to do so by the generation of researchers above me, and I learned what role conferences (talks, posters), publication lists (amount, where, etc) have in this. Using the Internet is just an extension of this, and nothing special; this idea of selfies was introduced before the internet, not after.

Unfortunately, the Internet is used more for these selfies (publication lists, CVs, announcements) than for actual research: exchange of research data is still very limited. That is indeed a shame and must change. But I guess it can only really change after the current way research is funded has changed.

On 2016 Sep 04, Egon Willighagen commented:

This paper raises a number of interesting points about contemporary research. The choice of word "selfies" is a bit misleading, IMHO, particularly because the article also discusses the internet.

The problem of selfies is partly because the liberal ideas that research is a free market where researchers have to sell their research and compete for funding. Indeed, I was trained to do so by the generation of researchers above me, and I learned what role conferences (talks, posters), publication lists (amount, where, etc) have in this. Using the Internet is just an extension of this, and nothing special; this idea of selfies was introduced before the internet, not after.

Unfortunately, the Internet is used more for these selfies (publication lists, CVs, announcements) than for actual research: exchange of research data is still very limited. That is indeed a shame and must change. But I guess it can only really change after the current way research is funded has changed.