User:Daniel Mietchen/Talks/COASP 2010/Notes

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Background

(CC) Image: Public Library of Science
Do journals provide sufficient contextualization for research?
  • For technical reasons, publishing was historically a separate step, performed about once per iteration of the research cycle
  • Publishing every relevant bit of information immediately at each step is technically feasible now, and the remaining hurdles are cultural ones.
  • Wikis allow for systematic linking and thus enhanced contextualization (sidenote: some have argued that links are distracting)
  • Overview of the evolution of wikis and wiki-like environments
Mentions MediaWiki plugin for Wordpress
Etherpad
Google Docs

Wikis as platforms for science communication

[http://ragesoss.com/blog/2006/11/20/top-10-reasons-why-academics-should-edit-wikipedia/

Top 10 Reasons Why Academics Should Edit Wikipedia]

Wikis as platforms for scholarly publishing

(CC) Image: Encyclopedia of Earth
Encyclopedia of Earth — a wiki with overview articles reviewed by experts, available under CC-BY-SA
"Somewhere at the fringe of science, someone will start using wiki publishing for science publishing."
  • Publication lists (incl. supplementary materials and in principle direct links to the raw data)
See also CoLabScience
  • Knol shares some aspects with wikis and blogs and is already in use for PLoS Currents.

Wikis as platforms for Open Access publishing

Examples: Gyrification, Surface-based morphometry and Chordoma
Also note that Fig. 3 of http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/neuro.11.025.2009 and Fig. 2(III) of http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2010.00020 explain the same thing, original to neither papers

Quality assessment

In principle, any system of peer review can be implemented on a wiki: The usual single-blind as well as double-blind or open peer review, with the reviewers or even authors always or optionally, temporarily or permanently remaining anonymous, with simple accept/ revise/ reject decisions or interactive two-stage or multi-stage discussions, in public or hidden from it (possibly even in part), before and/ or after formal publication.

Some wiki examples:

  1. Scholarpedia
  2. Encyclopedia of Earth
  3. Citizendium

Some non-wiki examples:

  1. Copernicus journals
  2. PLoS journals
  3. Frontiers journals
  4. BMC journals
  5. Semantic Web journal
  6. Rejecta Mathematics
  7. WebMedCentral

Business models

  • Main ones: author-pays, (partial) subscription, philanthropy, advertising, premium services

Opportunities

PD Image
Search by license — not possible yet. Why?
Non-wiki example
MediaWiki as a blog, using Semantic MediaWiki
Also for references

Notes

Essential elements of science publishing:

  • Research
  • Documentation
  • Making things public
  • Integration with previous and future knowledge
  • Discussion