It’s what – 10 years or more? – since we began to wonder when web technologies such as RSS, wikis and social bookmarking sites would be widely adopted by most working scientists, to further their productivity.

The email that I received today which began “I’ve read 3 interesting papers” and included 1 .doc, 3 .docx and 4 .pdf files as attachments is indicative of the answer to this question, which is “not any time soon.”

I’ve given up trying to educate colleagues in best practices. Clearly, I’m the one with the problem, since this is completely normal, acceptable behaviour for practically everyone that I’ve ever worked with. Instead, I’m just waiting for them to retire (or die). I reckon most senior scientists (and they’re the ones running the show) are currently aged 45-55. So it’s going to be 10-20 years before things improve.

Until then, I’ll just have to keep deleting your emails. Sorry.