It’s ridiculous that wikipedia is more structured and useful that most of the academic literature. I would like to start some kind of academic movement, whereby we reject closed journals, embrace the open source mentality, and collaborate on up-to-date and awesome wikis on every modern research area.
I understand that this is sort of what happens in physics—arXiv preprints (where anything good is expected to be developed into a peer-review-worthy journal article) and a specialist blogosphere. The exchange of prestige and hence the academic credit economy seems to still happen. I suspect the key factor here is arXiv being open-access. So a possible first step is to set up a preprint archive for that field and get the researchers blogging.
So a possible first step is to set up a preprint archive for that field
Arxiv accepts papers in any field. Researchers in medicine, chemistry, etc, just do not use it.
ADDED. Oops, I was wrong. From now on, I’ll think more before I hit that “Comment” button. (I still think that setting up a preprint server has already been tried in all academic fields except for those where it was obvious that it would not work. Also, I am pretty sure that arxiv.org tried to extend into computer science but never got a sizeable fraction of the papers in that field.)
arXiv is an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics.
I have a couple of pet theories for “why physics not chemistry” on arXiv use.
(1) arXiv’s structure really wants you to be using latex to produce your paper. My experience is that latex has conquered physics, but not other fields as much. This is supported by my impression that the more theoretical the physics the more computational it tends to be, and the more likely the author is to use latex and arXiv.
(2) The American Physical Society Journals are formatted in quite a minimalist manner, which tries to look quite formal. A typical arXiv preprint using a standard latex template will look like a less clean version of an APS paper. This means that too physicists (who read a lot of APS papers) a journal published paper doesn’t look drastically different to an arXiv preprint. If the popular journals for chemistry and biology format papers to look like Science or Nature articles then they will (at a glance) look quite distinct from a typical arXiv preprint. I think the “does it look drastically unlike a paper at first glance” test will have a very strong bearing on the seriousness people attach to arXiv.
I understand that this is sort of what happens in physics—arXiv preprints (where anything good is expected to be developed into a peer-review-worthy journal article) and a specialist blogosphere. The exchange of prestige and hence the academic credit economy seems to still happen. I suspect the key factor here is arXiv being open-access. So a possible first step is to set up a preprint archive for that field and get the researchers blogging.
Arxiv accepts papers in any field. Researchers in medicine, chemistry, etc, just do not use it.
ADDED. Oops, I was wrong. From now on, I’ll think more before I hit that “Comment” button. (I still think that setting up a preprint server has already been tried in all academic fields except for those where it was obvious that it would not work. Also, I am pretty sure that arxiv.org tried to extend into computer science but never got a sizeable fraction of the papers in that field.)
Where are you getting that from? The front page says:
Also there is this:
Point taken.
OK, the first step is to get them to use it :-) Why does physics do this but not chemistry?
I have a couple of pet theories for “why physics not chemistry” on arXiv use.
(1) arXiv’s structure really wants you to be using latex to produce your paper. My experience is that latex has conquered physics, but not other fields as much. This is supported by my impression that the more theoretical the physics the more computational it tends to be, and the more likely the author is to use latex and arXiv.
(2) The American Physical Society Journals are formatted in quite a minimalist manner, which tries to look quite formal. A typical arXiv preprint using a standard latex template will look like a less clean version of an APS paper. This means that too physicists (who read a lot of APS papers) a journal published paper doesn’t look drastically different to an arXiv preprint. If the popular journals for chemistry and biology format papers to look like Science or Nature articles then they will (at a glance) look quite distinct from a typical arXiv preprint. I think the “does it look drastically unlike a paper at first glance” test will have a very strong bearing on the seriousness people attach to arXiv.