torsdag 12 maj 2016

Wikimedia foundation the ideal publisher of free scientific papers

The issue of open science is a pressing one. The large publication houses, Elsiver, NPG and the others make huge profits publishing scientific papers. And the situation is actually absurd! The publishers really do nothing - they do not write the papers, perform the research, do the review, or the typesetting (ok, maybe thy do typesetting, but really it is to a minimal degree with the modern typesetting systems).
There is a slow drive for so called open access. However, this is something that even further increase publishers income since open access papers are funded by huge fees from the publishers to the authors.
So, we need some new actor stepping in and taking publishing responsibility, including review assignment, This is really the key problem that needs to be solved in true free science. How to manage the review process.
My suggestion is to have a process similar to how Wikipedia works. Maybe in combination with other elements such as a score system similar to Stack Exchange. And really Wikimedia is the ideal organisation to take on this task. It is the natural extension of their current operation, maybe in connection to Wikiversity. But a completely new project would probably be even better.

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