User:Daniel Mietchen/Talks/COASP 2010/Wikis as platforms for OA publishing

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Session start · Talk start · Quotes · Background · Wikis as science communication platforms ·
Wikis as platforms for Open Access publishing · Prototypes · Editorial policies · Guided tour ·
Obstacles · Alternatives · Outlook · Summary · Slides · Video · Q & A · Demo

The idea is not new: Somewhere at the fringe of science, someone will start using wiki publishing for science publishing. — John Schmidt (2006)

Because for practical purposes we can define publishing to include, along with page design and typesetting, the functions of editing, manufacturing, advertising, selling, warehousing, shipping, billing, collection, and other aspects of "valued added" and "Who will keep the gates? How? To what end? — Jack G. Goellner (1988; 2010 wiki version)

Apparently, people are realizing that a much more open post-publication peer review process, where anyone can take part, is a lot more effective —  Mike Masnick (August 2010)

Wikis as platforms for OA publishing

• Open Access by default (non-open licenses are possible)
  • Fine-grained configurability of user rights, thereby allowing for any peer review model (and any business model). More details here.
• In comparison to paper-based scholarly communication:
  • Web-native: Basically anything on the web can be embedded or otherwise directly linked to
  • Contextual links are the central pillar
  • Version control built in (along with time stamps, naturally), thus allowing stable releases and updatability, while establishing priority
• Several popular wikis are open source and have been tested under high load

• built-in article-level metrics at bottom of page and via What links here (which could also be used for other pages, e.g. those hosting images, references, or datasets), author-level metrics via Special:Contributions, further aggregation possible (e.g. at the level of research projects, labs or thematic workgroups)

• The more open research becomes, the more diverse will the acts of science publishing become. Wikis exist for all aspects of the research cycle (except for funding decisions, though the reasons are not of a technical nature)

• Wikis stress the re-use part of CC licenses (e.g. for images) — an aspect of OA publishing that does not receive much attention outside research blogs (cf. detailed discussion with respect to the American Physical Society, arxiv and Quantiki, and the final outcome: APS authors keep copyright over derivative works). While the main purpose of such licensing is certainly to make the research available to other specialists working in the field, they also make the research available to scientists from other fields (not just in academia) as well as non-scientists (teachers, entrepreneurs, media, patient groups or hobbyists).
  • 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; a collaborative version might have been better
  • Direct re-use by way of iframes: demo
  • Incompatibility of wikis and closed-access publishing — re-use of CC-BY-SA content in copyrighted papers