Wikifying scholarly canons | Scholarpedia blog

"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, published in 1627, introduced the bold idea of a world in which humans developed technology and accumulated knowledge in support of the common good. His book helped inspire the Age of Enlightenment and the idea that we could look to the present, and not only the ancients, to better understand ourselves and the world. It particularly inspired Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who in the mid-17th century began a practice of publicly demonstrating his findings in his then new '(e)laboratory', a large venue designed to allow others to observe the apparatus he used and validate his results [1].  As an alternative to requiring actual witnesses to validate every scientific result, Boyle developed conventions of modesty and detail in scientific reporting. These conventions were widely adopted and succeeded in describing methods and results with enough clarity to inspire trust and permit replication, thereby allowing scientific knowledge to build on itself. But standardized scholarly communication also had secondary benefits: thanks to official archival publication, researchers could claim credit for their discoveries; papers themselves took on a more standard form, making them more useful and accessible to readers; and editorial review helped to filter out redundant or unimportant reports.  Ever since the British Royal Society‘s founding of the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, the scholarly article and monograph have continued to serve as the basic units of contribution, persisting even as science has professionalized and media turned electronic ... Given that the purpose of scholarship is the advancement of human knowledge, one might imagine that scholars would jump at the opportunity to make accurate information on a topic they care about easily accessible. Yet for the most part, academics continue to publish original research within journals that restrict access, and have thus far not engaged substantively with, for instance, Wikipedia.  When academics have been asked why they do not contribute to Wikipedia, or why they do not make their data more easily available, or why they continue to avoid new 'open access' publication venues, one of the most common explanations is 'not enough time' [7,8]. Academic hiring, tenure, and grant review boards preference most strongly the publication of scholarly results in prestigious outlets ... A potential solution is the creation of a scholarly wiki-based encyclopedia, one that recognizes the existing imperatives of academic communication. As a wiki, every entry would be a 'living review', subject to further revision as the field advances ..."