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

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

The idea is not new:

Somewhere at the fringe of science, someone will start using wiki publishing for science publishing. — John Schmidt (in 2006)

Wikis as platforms for science communication in general

Wikis can be used, in principle, for any aspect of scholarly communication, as detailed in this comparison of wiki- and paper-based communication systems and the related blog post.

Examples exist for all steps of the research cycle, except successful applications to major funders (see this overview for some attempts)

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).
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)