If the collaborative wiki process works for compiling an encyclopedia, couldn't the same approach work for classifying all the diseases and injuries that afflict humankind? The World Health Organization thinks it can.
It is embarking on one of its periodic updates of a system of medical coding called the International Classification of Diseases, or ICD, and it wants the world's help doing it.
While work on previous versions has been the domain of hand-picked experts, this time the Geneva-based global health agency is throwing open its portal to anyone who wants to weigh in on the revision....
The new, more open approach to updating the disease classifications won't be entirely wiki-esque. That process, with its anyone-can-edit approach, builds a degree of vulnerability into the end product, with some contributors deliberately planting false information for the fun of it.
With the ICD, people can propose changes and argue for them on a WHO-sponsored blog. But groups of subject matter experts will weigh and synthesize the suggestions, said [Robert Jakob, the WHO medical officer responsible for the ICD]....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
