Many people think that science is too closed, and too slow. We are trying to change that. There are 4 things we are trying to achieve with Academia.edu - ways in which we are trying to re-shape and accelerate science:
- Instant distribution. Right now there is a 12 month time-lag between submitting a paper to a journal, and the paper being published. We need to remove that time-lag and introduce instant distribution of scientific ideas.
- Multi-media. Right now, scientists only share papers in PDF form. We need to bring about a science where scientists are incentivized to share data-sets, code, videos, blog posts, and comments on all these media. Right now 50% or more of the world’s scientific output does not get shared, because the system of credibility metrics only rewards one kind of format, the paper. We need to change this.
- Open access. We need to bring about a world where a villager in India has the same access to the world’s scientific output as a professor in Harvard. When you open up access to the world’s scientific literature to 2 billion people, magical things may happen.
- Better peer review. Right now the peer review process takes 12 months to complete, and only surfaces the opinions of two academics - academics who may be biased, uninformed about the subject area, or just in a bad mood when writing the review. 2 people is too small a sample size. We need a faster and more robust peer review system, one that surfaces the opinions of the entire scientific community, across a variety of dimensions, and in real-time.
There are a couple of themes that connect these four goals. One theme is that increasingly scientists are wanting to have a direct relationship with their audience, as well as analytics that reflect how that relationship is developing. Previously the scientific journal would mediate the relationship between the scientist and his/her audience. This is starting to change, and it's reflective of broader changes on the web, as sites like Twitter and Facebook allow people to have more direct, unmediated, connections with their audience.
The second theme that connects these points is credibility metrics. The behavior of scientists is driven by the need to build credibility metrics, ones that reflect well on the scientist and his/her work when they are applying for a grant or a job. New reputation and credibility metrics are starting to emerge in science that incentivize things like instant distribution, or the sharing of data-sets, or open access sharing. I think the emergence of these new credibility metrics (citation counts from Google Scholar, usage metrics such as download counts from Academia.edu) are going to have a big impact on the rate at which science evolves.
It's an exciting time for science. Science is transitioning from a 17th century way of sharing ideas (sending papers around the world with 12 month time-lags in every iteration) to a much faster system of sharing ideas on the web.
If this mission sounds exciting to you, I would love to hear from you at richard [at] academia.edu. We are looking to hire engineers to join our team, and more generally I love chatting to people who are excited about trying to make science faster, and more open.
I hate that my first reaction to this was a jaded groan. In actuality, whatever your profit motive, your stated goal is quite noble and valuable. It is always astonishing to me how litte researchers and academics care about the metrics of dissemination, as if printing something for their peers to read and having inset charts hidden away in the body of the text was all that's needed to make their work known. But not much effort is taken to improve communication and transparency because hey, academics are smart enough to figure it out themselves, right? Good luck with your work.
> how litte researchers and academics care about the metrics of dissemination
I think if anything, the pendulum has shifted rapidly to the other direction, where many (and especially many in administration) care for little besides metrics. Impact factors, acceptance rates, citation counts, h-indices, media "hits", etc. are the currencies that rule academic promotion.
IMHO, you should start by offering to host the paper native source (whether latex or doc - I'm not a huge fan of PDF, especially when A4 printing issues arise)
Then, putting the matching data online would be a worthy 2nd step.
I have a "long term project" to put that on my own website but never did. Maybe one day when I have more time.
For some simulations I did, uploading the sourcecode and the various part so that my results can be replicated on the same page as the paper would be great - but it can get big (like in GB) and I'm not sure it would be cost effective for you to do that.
I'd even like to upload a VM with all the tools setup and ready (free software only so I'm fine) and the queries making my results as batch files along with other premade queries, but that would be even worse - the overhead of a distribution is big.
Yet making results more reproductible would be a great goal.
How do you see yourself in relation to ResearchGate, a startup in Berlin that apparently is quite 'respectable' in the Berlin startup scene? Surely they cannot have escaped your attention...
(and I know for a fact that you have not escaped theirs)
- Instant distribution. Right now there is a 12 month time-lag between submitting a paper to a journal, and the paper being published. We need to remove that time-lag and introduce instant distribution of scientific ideas.
- Multi-media. Right now, scientists only share papers in PDF form. We need to bring about a science where scientists are incentivized to share data-sets, code, videos, blog posts, and comments on all these media. Right now 50% or more of the world’s scientific output does not get shared, because the system of credibility metrics only rewards one kind of format, the paper. We need to change this.
- Open access. We need to bring about a world where a villager in India has the same access to the world’s scientific output as a professor in Harvard. When you open up access to the world’s scientific literature to 2 billion people, magical things may happen.
- Better peer review. Right now the peer review process takes 12 months to complete, and only surfaces the opinions of two academics - academics who may be biased, uninformed about the subject area, or just in a bad mood when writing the review. 2 people is too small a sample size. We need a faster and more robust peer review system, one that surfaces the opinions of the entire scientific community, across a variety of dimensions, and in real-time.
There are a couple of themes that connect these four goals. One theme is that increasingly scientists are wanting to have a direct relationship with their audience, as well as analytics that reflect how that relationship is developing. Previously the scientific journal would mediate the relationship between the scientist and his/her audience. This is starting to change, and it's reflective of broader changes on the web, as sites like Twitter and Facebook allow people to have more direct, unmediated, connections with their audience.
The second theme that connects these points is credibility metrics. The behavior of scientists is driven by the need to build credibility metrics, ones that reflect well on the scientist and his/her work when they are applying for a grant or a job. New reputation and credibility metrics are starting to emerge in science that incentivize things like instant distribution, or the sharing of data-sets, or open access sharing. I think the emergence of these new credibility metrics (citation counts from Google Scholar, usage metrics such as download counts from Academia.edu) are going to have a big impact on the rate at which science evolves.
It's an exciting time for science. Science is transitioning from a 17th century way of sharing ideas (sending papers around the world with 12 month time-lags in every iteration) to a much faster system of sharing ideas on the web.
If this mission sounds exciting to you, I would love to hear from you at richard [at] academia.edu. We are looking to hire engineers to join our team, and more generally I love chatting to people who are excited about trying to make science faster, and more open.