[Q] There's an "open access" movement in academia to promote unfettered access online to sources of academic knowledge. Will Wikipedia ever be extended into academia for this purpose, and are there other communities on the Net that could use their own kind of Wikipedia or Wikinews, too?
[A] Yes, Wikipedia will play an important role in the open access movement. There are many, many communities that can learn from the success of Wikipedia to generate high quality work from collaborative efforts. I think there could be a similar model for that sort of thing, but it would have to be different from Wikipedia. As an example: one of the firm rules of Wikipedia is "no original research" — we simply aren't qualified to evaluate it. That's what academic journals are for. So, why are academic journals written in such an old-fashioned way? Can't there be some dramatic improvements in that process now that we have collaborative authoring technologies? I think so! But exactly how to do that? Hmm, it's an interesting problem.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/08/2005 08:49:00 AM.
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.
