Vaunted science publisher joins social-marketing fray

Look who's jumping on the social-networking bandwagon: none other than the Nature Publishing Group, the 140-year-old British company best-known for its flagship science journal, Nature.

The online venture is called Scitable, and it's being run by a Cambridge-based team, Nature Education. (Near Kendall Square, not Cambridge U.)

Scitable offers a space in which college and advanced high-school students can find high-quality essays about science topics. Students who sign on as members can ask each other questions, embark on research collaborations with each other, and even connect with professors. And there's an "Ask an expert" feature (Nature Education staff do some vetting to make sure students aren't just submitting their homework). Professors, too, can use Scitable to form networks, for example to create online adjuncts to their courses.

Scitable's content currently centers on genetics and evolution, but it will eventually broaden to include the other life sciences, and then the physical sciences.

"One of our starting points," says Vikram Savkar, senior vice president and publishing director of Nature Education, "was that where students like to be, even during education, is online. But what they find online is not always credible." In one survey, his team found that when students have a question about science 80 percent turn to Wikipedia first.

Nature Education also wants to patch some holes in the leaky pipeline of science education. Scientists often lament that curious children get bumped off the science path in junior high, high school, and even college. "At every point along the way," says Savkar, "it is important that they have access to information that keeps them passionate."

All worthy goals, and the Nature Publishing Group has an obvious interest in keeping up the numbers of future science-journal subscribers. But given that pretty much everything on Scitable is now free, how will the site generate revenue? In addition to the usual (shaky) sources like advertising and sponsors, Savkar says Scitable plans to offer "premium" services like online tutoring and test preparation, which have proved quite lucrative for other companies.