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.
… 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.
Not completely. And working through the fine print of my disagreement here helps to show just how rich the field of possibilities is for an alternative to the current system.
In some ways, Scholarpedia is more closed than the current print journal system. After all, anyone can start a journal—there are journals of intelligent design studies, for example. But it probably would not be possible to get Dr. Izhikevich’s approval for an encyclopedia of ID under the scholarpedia umbrella, nor to get the curator to allow an ID-promoting article into Scholarpedia’s evolution encyclopedia. Scholarpedia promotes open access for readers, but not for authors.
There is also some question of whether Scholarpedia embraces the open source mentality—there is the whole complicated question of derivative works.
One difficulty with having “awesome wikis on every modern research area” (e.g., waffling) is that there just aren’t enough people in the intersection of people who are on the frontier of waffling and people who want to contribute to the waffling wiki.
For a more concrete example, the DispersiveWiki basically runs on the fame of Tao alone. In the past thirty days, his was the only non-userpage edit. The Tricki is another example, this time running off of Gowers’ fame.
That sounds rather like Scholarpedia’s plan: http://www.scholarpedia.org/
Not completely. And working through the fine print of my disagreement here helps to show just how rich the field of possibilities is for an alternative to the current system.
In some ways, Scholarpedia is more closed than the current print journal system. After all, anyone can start a journal—there are journals of intelligent design studies, for example. But it probably would not be possible to get Dr. Izhikevich’s approval for an encyclopedia of ID under the scholarpedia umbrella, nor to get the curator to allow an ID-promoting article into Scholarpedia’s evolution encyclopedia. Scholarpedia promotes open access for readers, but not for authors.
There is also some question of whether Scholarpedia embraces the open source mentality—there is the whole complicated question of derivative works.
One difficulty with having “awesome wikis on every modern research area” (e.g., waffling) is that there just aren’t enough people in the intersection of people who are on the frontier of waffling and people who want to contribute to the waffling wiki.
For a more concrete example, the DispersiveWiki basically runs on the fame of Tao alone. In the past thirty days, his was the only non-userpage edit. The Tricki is another example, this time running off of Gowers’ fame.
Intelligent design seems to have found an online home here.