Scientific Publishing – the system whereby scientific papers are peer reviewed and published by specialized publishers, is being deeply transformed by the Fourth Revolution. “Watch This Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry Evaporate Overnight” says Dylan Tweeney on a post, describing how open publishing and reviewing is profoundly revolutionizing the scientific paper publishing industry.
One of the main issues for the interested dabbler in science is that it is almost never possible to access important scientific papers without paying significant fees. I am not a scientist, merely an interested member of the public, and this barrier is a barrier to spreading knowledge in the wider society. And more – why would a small number of publishers benefit when most writers and peer-reviewers do the work for free? Scientific publishing sometimes looks like an oligopoly held by a few entrenched publishers.
Sites like Academia.edu propose to change fundamentally the balance of power in this industry, and basically to wipe out the intermediaries – publishers – which added value is now squashed by the internet. In their latest blog post about reaching the bar of 10 million users, the founder states “It would be a great thing if we could get every science PDF ever written on the internet, available for free. There is a lot of work to do before we make that vision a reality, but this 10 million user milestone is a good start”. A good start – we can already predict that within a few years, the entire system for producing, reviewing and making science available will be transformed for the better of humankind!
