[hessammehr]

Other comments have pointed out the prestige issue. My real issue with this is that academic findings need to be freed from the whole "paper" format: a static, discrete document. New findings compliment and invalidate older ones. In the old days there was no way to reflect this due to the static nature of print. The paper and its physical constraints do not need to exist with today's technology. One more thing -- How many times have you wondered if some journal somewhere has the answer to the question you're trying to answer (but don't know how to look it up)? The disparate, static content of journals resists the formation of a cohesive corpus of knowledge.

Github has no barrier to entry, yet does not have a prestige issue. People get hired based on the content of their github account. I can't see why funding agencies couldn't use a similar system to track the academic contributions of researchers.

It's ironic that the rest of the world has moved on to connected, consistent experiences while academics are still stuck with papers. I've been thinking after I submit my thesis that I should find other people that are likewise frustrated and try to build a better system for academic collaboration and dissemination. Perhaps something more like Wikipedia than a journal.

[untilHellbanned]

Alot of people want a wikipedia/github-like system but nobody will go there until it has the prestige. Academics are not early adopters. They are followers. I'm a professor in a STEM field at a major university so I'm speaking from experience.

[hessammehr]

Agreed. Would you say it helps if the funding agencies were on board with, say, having a non-profit foundation run this service? They would have a much easier time allocating their $ since the system can show who contributed what and how many people found it useful. I feel like PIs need to know they can pay the bills and as long as the money is coming we can get them to try out the new systems.

[summarite]

There are a lot of people trying lots of things. Eg a French startup is trying to do a kind of system for add it ng such micro contributions with blockchain to confirm who did the original contribution. It looks from my view a lot like a kind of specialised Twitter, but I'm not informed in depth of the system.

I think the main problem with any such system is that a paper has a certain weight. You can be sure that it has a minimum value. (and estimate its value from the journal it's published in). Number of contribuons does not give an equally good indicator - eg the most active users on Wikipedia are all bots doing minor edits.

In addition, there is no consensus building like on github for individual projects which each in turn can be judged on popularity/use/... . Having a similar system for a science corpus of knowledge would even more encourage status quo thinking than the current system.

Apart from that, having a self-contained paper has value as that's a package you can judge as relevant or not to your work. It's fairly easy to use as the author is basically doing the curation. Having all knowledge of a field in one single Wikipedia like entity could end up being overwhelming for anyone but (and maybe even) existing experts.