[Foundation-l] Black market science

Mon Jul 18 08:28:52 UTC 2011

On 07/12/11 11:16 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
> It's not something we've developed expertise in doing. While it may be
> a valuable service, that would almost be another top-level Project or
> two.
>
> On the other hand, PLoS (plos.org - the public library of science) is
> a great journal publisher that reviews and publishes scientific work
> under a free license.  [They impose even fewer restrictions on reuse
> than Wikimedia, using CC-BY, which is a more appropriate license in my
> opinion for novel and scientific work.]
>
> So at one level, we should simply support PLoS and amplify their
> visibility and effectiveness.
>
> At another, we could serve as a public repository of works submitted to them.

I don't really object to hosting the kinds of papers under discussion, 
but at what point does the pursuit of such content become a monopolistic 
practice.  Others should be hosting these too, even if it results in 
duplication and redundancy. We should even be encouraging researchers to 
publish elsewhere.first. To have that happen there needs to be more 
clarity in the reliable financing of open access sites in general.

There are consequences to being the big kid on the block. Rather than 
merely reflecting trends and attitudes we begin to lead them.  With 
something as simple as alternative spellings, when we adopt the most 
common spelling based on our own quantitative analysis of Google usages 
we affect the future analysis by others because their analyses will 
include usages by Wikimedia and by those influenced by Wikimedia.  Other 
natural processes which may have favoured the alternative are thwarted 
in their evolution.

Ray