Wiki Scholarly Journals

Add links
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
This is an archived version of this page, as edited by Akagu~metawiki (talk | contribs) at 20:58, 8 July 2004 (wikiresearch). It may differ significantly from the current version.

Maybe this is an idea already discussed in "wiki space" already. But I have "only" been a contributor to wikipedia (english) for a bit over a year. I also happen to be a university professor.

The concept of peer review [[1]] is a foundational one in scholarly journals -- in which contributions are "reviewed" by external referees prior to publication. There are a few electronic journals that have been established which use a formal peer review process prior to "publication" in electronic media.

Let me analogize (I apologize in advance, I am an engineering professor not a computer scientist). My understanding of the concept of open source software, and also to some extent of the wikipedia and other wiki foundation projects is that they rely on the concept that many "eyeballs" improve the product (the converse of "too many cooks spoil the broth"). Suppose a WikiJournals project were organized in which scholarly articles (with appropriate footnoting, etc) were downloaded and subject to the "review" of the wiki-universe. I am impressed at the relative lack of errors in the wikipedia articles that are in areas I am highly knowledable about.

Peer reviews in scholarly journals are conducted by selected reviewers known to an editor. Could it not be that a WikiJournal would attract a community of knowledgeable contributors and reviewers (and unlike traditional journals -- either electronic or print -- the nature of Wiki permits intensive dialoging (and very import to me -- it seems -- archiving and potential for redaction of changes). My observation of the dynamics in wikipedia is that except for politically/culturally charged topics, after a while the edits do die off.

Of course such a project would require some "early adopter" volunteers amongst the scholarly community.

I look forward to comments.

--Professor Water 22:48, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Personal opinion: I think there will be problems with the "ownership" of articles. Editing an encyclopedia article which is supposed to be general is different to editing an article where someone else put his personal style and research results in it. How do you think a scholarly journal could benefit from using a wiki? Do you know http://plos.org/ ? A german wikipedian had the idea of creating a wiki for abstracts (and translation of abstracts) of scholarly articles, I gave him a pointer to this page here. Maybe this could be also discussed in the context of the proposed Wikiversity and Wikiresearch. --Elian 17:52, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In review articles there is less personal style. A scholarly journal with review articles and/or abstracts could benefit a lot from using a wiki but I doubt that you can list your wiki edits in your publication list :-( on the other hand Wikipedia does have a huge w:impact factor ;-) By the way I really think of funding a journal of our own within the next years (some kind of WikiReader WikiResearch) -- Nichtich 21:08, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See http://www.livingreviews.org/. These journals contain peer reviewed, open access and regularly updated review-articles. It's only a little step further to do it with a Wiki. Are you thinking of using a Wiki for the internal process of peer review or publically available? -- Nichtich 21:08, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

WikiAbstracts could also be started with a couple of motivated (PhD) students. WikiReviews is nothing but excellent Wikipedia articles with a full bibliography treating research topics. -- Nichtich 21:27, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the above comments. A few reactions -- 1) http://plos.org/ is a "classical" electronic journal (see also for example British Medical Journal -- http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/ ). In this model, papers are still submitted, reviewers are selected by an editor, and a decision is rendered. This relies in the editor being able to select knowledgeable reviewers and also in the editor him/her self being unbiased. A WikiScholarlyJournal would open up review to the wikiuniverse. Would this work -- the empirical evidence from w:Wikipedia seems to be that "on average" open reviewing leads to a good product. Thanks for the link to http://www.livingreviews.org/, however it is a bit similar to plos, although the articles appear to be envisioned as somewhat more dynamic, although the review process is still a static one.

2) It might be that a WikiReviews would be the way to test the concept out -- open, NPOV reviewed articles. The "History" function of the wiki seems to be one that is amenable to citation for the primary author and contributors to review processes of articles. As an academic myself, this is not something that I would ever advise a junior (nontenured) faculty member to engage in, however it might lead to a fundamental creation of a new vehicle for dissemination and evaluation of knowledge.

3) There is certainly some intersection between my suggestion and Wikiresearch that is worth exploring. --Professor Water 00:30, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


Wikiresearch << >> Wiki Scholarly Journals

I think this is sort of what I meant with Wikiresearch :) Let's merge, okay? See also this thingy about Wikiresearch. Only, to think of it is as a journal is kind of redundant, I think, wikis are more or less timeless. Akagu 20:58, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Akagu 20:58, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wiki_Scholarly_Journals&oldid=52153"