Have we reached another milestone in the evolution of academic publishing? Scholarpedia is the first "free peer-reviewed encyclopedia," a kind of morphing of open access (OA) publishing with wiki technology.
Initial reaction may be, not another Wikipedia wannabe!, especially as the ink is barely dry on Larry Sanger's Citizendium manifesto, which he describes as a "progressive fork" of Wikipedia. Scholarpedia could be very different, however....
Although suffering from a few gremlins when the blogosphere took a look, Scholarpedia could disrupt publishing models.
For a start, it takes the headache out of setting up and maintaining an online publishing operation for scholars inclined to develop their own OA journal....
Anyone can suggest changes to an article, and there's an anonymous forum for initial peer review. Scholarpedia appears far more inclusive than Citizendium and less obsessed with creating something worthy of "intellectuals."
With concerns continuing to mount about errors in Wikipedia (many put there for malicious reasons) and even hackers using it to hide malware, then something more managed and controlled like Scholarpedia may well be an answer to freely available scholarship online....
Comment. Two quick ones: (1) Scholarpedia launched before Citizendium, by eight months, not after. (2) If Scholarpedia is superior to Wikipedia, then let's find a way to praise it, even as "an answer to freely available scholarship online", without leaving the false impression that the large and growing body of peer-reviewed OA literature suffers from the same problems as Wikipedia.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/18/2006 11:27:00 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.
