Academia: from inefficient effectiveness to efficient ineffectiveness | The Mandarin

The tragedy is that, as the magic and miracle of cooperative peer production unfolded on the internet – on Wikipedia and in open-source software – even greater miracles must surely beckon in open science. The digital world could turbocharge scientific advance at every stage of the scientific endeavour. It could foster new data collaborations between scientists, other kinds of experts, citizens and institutions such as hospitals and the sharing and repurposing of data, software resources. And the internet could foster faster, cheaper, vastly wider publication (with a major expansion in pre-publication). But reformers look little notice. Today’s open science in academia is pursued by an adventuresome minority despite, rather than because of reform. It’s received fairly marginal support from governments, academic institutions and researchers, caught up, as they now are, in relentless competition.