How The Web Has Changed Science

Actually, quite a bit, but not as much as it could in the future:

Scientists have therefore proved resourceful in using the web to further their research. They have, however, tended to lag when it comes to employing the latest web-based social-networking tools to open up scientific discourse and encourage more effective collaboration.

Journalists are now used to having their every article commented on by dozens of readers. Indeed, many bloggers develop and refine their essays on the basis of such input. Yet despite several attempts to encourage a similarly open sytem of peer review of scientific research published on the web, most researchers still limit such reviews to a few anonymous experts. When Nature, one of the world’s most respected scientific journals, experimented with open peer review in 2006, the results were disappointing. Only 5% of the authors it spoke to agreed to have their article posted for review on the web—and their instinct turned out to be right, as almost half of the papers that were then posted attracted no comments.

Actually, I think that climate science has gotten a lot of review, peer and otherwise, on the web.

One thought on “How The Web Has Changed Science”

  1. One of the dumber ideas I’ve seen aired though was to post scientific papers directly to Wikipedia. Because what we really need are anonymous editors “fixing” your data.

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