Open Access News

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A scientific wiki that keeps track of author contributions

Robert Hoffmann, A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters, Nature Genetics, August 27, 2008.

Abstract:   WikiGenes is the first wiki system to combine the collaborative and largely altruistic possibilities of wikis with explicit authorship. In view of the extraordinary success of Wikipedia there remains no doubt about the potential of collaborative publishing, yet its adoption in science has been limited. Here I discuss a dynamic collaborative knowledge base for the life sciences that provides authors with due credit and that can evolve via continual revision and traditional peer review into a rigorous scientific tool.

Also see the press release, the WikiGenes site, or the video guided tour.