Where will the key ideas shaping the future of scientific publishing come from? | Michael Nielsen

"Stefan Janusz from the Royal Society asked me to comment briefly on where I’d look for new ideas about the future of scientific publishing. Here’s my response, crossposted to the Royal Society’s blog about scientific publishing. It’s tempting to assume the key ideas will come from leading scientists, journal publishers, librarians, policy makers, and so on. While these are all important groups, I don’t think they’re going to invent the key ideas behind the future of scientific publishing. That will be done primarily by two groups of outsiders: exceptionally creative user interface designers, and people who design group experiences. Let me unpack both those statements. The first important group is user interface designers. Ultimately, scientific journals are a user interface to humanity’s scientific knowledge, and people such as Henry Oldenburg, Johannes Gutenberg, and Aldus Manutius were all interface designers. Now, many people working in science don’t understand the importance or difficulty of user interface design. It’s tempting to think it’s either about 'making things pretty' or about 'making things easy to use'. And, in fact, much work on interface design doesn’t go much deeper than those tasks. But the designers I’m talking about are doing something much deeper. They’re attempting to invent powerful new representations for knowledge, representations that will let us manipulate and comprehend knowledge in new ways. Think, for example, of how the invention of user interface ideas such as the hyperlink and the search box have transformed how we relate to knowledge. Or take a look at some of Bret Victor’s beautiful designs for changing how we think about systems and mathematics. In a more playful vein, look at Marco ten Bosch’s gorgeous game Miegakure, which challenges people to learn to think in four spatial dimensions. Or consider the way programming languages such as Coq and Logo change the way people interface to mathematical knowledge ..."