The Emancipation of Science
"Let my research go!"Scientists have long been held hostage by academic journals that use a small group of anonymous experts to secretly review and subsequently accept or deny research for publication - all without having to justify their decisions. But no longer.
Next month, a non-profit called the Public Library of Science will launch PLoS One ... an open-peer-review journal focusing on Science and Medicine.
The idea is simple, charge the author to publish any work they wish. Then make it freely available online for you to read, download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish. Manuscripts in PLoS ONE are posted for the world to dissect after an editor gives them just a cursory look. "If we publish a vast number of papers, some of which are mediocre and some of which are stellar, Nobel Prize-winning work — I will be happy," said Chris Surridge, the PLoS Ones's managing editor.
Bravo! "Wonderblog power -- Activated". Open-peer review and watchdog sites have already had a huge impact on politics and news reporting in general, now we will see what it can do for science once politics and pettiness are removed from the equation. The idea of direct-to-public publication was helped along by creepy Russian mathematician (and Uni-bomber wannabe) Grigori Perelman. In 2002 he bypassed the peer-review system and posted a landmark paper to the online repository arXiv. Perelman later won the Fields Medal (which he later declined) for his contribution to the proof of the Poincare conjecture.What's that sound off in the distance?
That's the sound of an Ivory Tower coming down.
(Yes, ivory towers sound different than your average tower when demolished)
