| The missing component is the openness more than anything. That and having a central space to go for research. I agree that the crypto attached to this is really weird, and the fact that it seems to be a for-profit is less than ideal. But the idea of a Github or Stackoverflow for research that uses technology to crowdsource and mediate the review process (both pre and post publish) and then makes that process (at least the post publish part) open and available for the public to see has a ton of merit and potential value. I grew up in academia. My parents are both academics, as are my god parents. But for any number of reasons I chose not to go into academia. I used to scoff at the whole idea of an ivory tower when I was on the inside, but having spent a decade and a half on the outside I now understand. Science is completely walled off from the public. It's happening in institutions that charge more than a house for access, and published in a massive constellation of journals which charge $15 to $30 per paper, or hundreds to thousands of dollars per year for full access. When you take the cost of a single paper, the fact that papers on any particular topic are often spread across a myriad of journals, and consider the fact that science works in the aggregate then add in the media's dismal scientific reporting track record and is it any wonder we have a crisis of scientific understanding and trust? Once you leave academia, your access to the truths it produces is completely cut off. We need to find a way to break the journal system. The things they provide to the scientific community - editorial assistance, review, and reputation - really ought to be easily replaced by crowdsourcing and software. We just need to build that software and then convince the scientific community to use it. The benefits to science and society could be massive, because a public that understands and trusts science means a public more willing to fund science, and a society that has a way to agree upon what is and isn't true. |