Recent replies to "Wiki review journals"

Reply from Richard Akerman

Richard Akerman — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:36:07 -0000

I think people get used to their collaboration and work habits, and emailing around documents is what many of us first used and continue to use.

For wiki reviews, you might want to look into/contact the WikiProfessional/WikiProteins people, they have done a lot of thinking about it, although their site is still not in open launch

wikiprofessional.info

Here are some notes I took on a presentation:

Community peer review in Wiki environment – Christine Chichester – June 22 – ICSTI 2007 Nancy

Reply from Maxine Clarke

Maxine Clarke — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:26:48 -0000

In my own ex-field, which is small, everyone got together at a meeting and someone volunteered to write the wikipedia entry. Everyone else was very relieved (as it is a field with its share of cranky theory proponents), even though not everyone agrees with everything the volunteer thinks, the view is sufficiently accurate that everyone else basically agreed with it and were happy with it. I don’t think there is much interest in going in to correct or collaboratively edit, but I admit to not having looked for a while!

Reply from Hilary Spencer

Hilary Spencer — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:53:43 -0000

This is slightly off topic, but may be relevant. Back in May 2007, I was interested in the credentials of people contributing to biology-related pages on Wikipedia. Very briefly, I looked at the self-identified credentials of people contributing to the Molecular and Cellular Biology Wikiproject on Wikipedia. From my non-rigorous study, it seemed that approximately a third of the people listed as degree-holding participants in the project had PhDs (in a relevant field; some from well known universities) or MDs. (I could only determine degree-holding status for about half the project members: n=65). The rest of the participants were divided between undergraduate students and recent graduates, with a couple of high school students, and a couple of MS/MSc graduates. So it seems that some would-be authors are already contributing to projects like this.

A couple of questions: Would every sentence be attributable to a contributor (this is effectively what the change history on Wikipedia conveys, albeit by pseudonym)? Or would the review be a joint effort by a panel of experts with individual contributions unattributed? Would the review be edited/reviewed prior to online publication, or open for continual editing by the experts? It seems that using a service like Google Docs/Buzzword/Zoho would lead to collaborative editing, followed by publication of an authoritative version, attributable jointly to all authors. In comparison, using an application like wikimedia would lead to collaborative publication, with every edit attributable to an individual author, and little or no review prior to publication.

Reply from Martin Fenner

Martin Fenner — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:22:32 -0000

Matt,

I like your suggestion. A wiki would be much more open, instead of one article it is many different topics connected to each other. But for some reviews the focussed article with the personal opionions of the authors is important.

I’m in the middle of an experiment using Buzzword to write a review article. I will report my experience when I’m done, but it is definetely a good tool for collaborative editing.

Reply from Pedro Beltrao

Pedro Beltrao — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 11:33:15 -0000

I have used Google Docs to write a manuscript with other authors once and I have to say I prefer it to the usual back and forth emails with .doc attachments. Zoho documents looks a bit better than Google right now in the writing application.

I have also been thinking of wiki reviews or wiki book chapters as an extension to the type of crowdsourcing that goes on in the science blog carnivals. Right now most carnivals run without a goal in mind, just a periodic collection of some of the best blog posts under a particular subject. If a publisher would be interested we could direct the efforts of the carnival into (also) help maintain a wiki review that could be re-published, for example, every year. This way there there would be also an added incentive for the scientists to start blogging and to produce better quality posts since there would be a publication in the horizon.

OpenWetWare has a group of wiki reviews under way already but I don’t know if they tried to publish any of them.

Reply from Maxine Clarke

Maxine Clarke — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:38:27 -0000

Penguin did this with a wiki book, didn’t they? I seem to recall it was so popular with potential contributors that the site crashed. I guess this would not happen with the latest in cell signalling.

I think one issue with a lot of these online projects is how A&I services see them (eg Medline, ISI and others). As well as the issues of whether people want to use this kind of format to which you allude, I think a driver for authors is accreditation and citation. Although the main scientific A&I services are getting friendlier to the online format, I think they are quite print-focused still, or at least, “conventional article focused”.

Is anyone using the free service Google Docs and Spreasheets (and Presentations!) to do collaborative editing, do you know? None of the scientists I have asked are. Knowing the number of times a paper is revised before it is submitted to a journal, you might think an online group editing system would appeal, for version control if nothing else (all those emails flying around all those international collaborations). Then it is perhaps only a matter of time before people want to translate the same type of approach to the live “published” environment.

Of course there is the question of the print edition of your review—would it be in a journal or a stand-alone, and in either case, would you want to “stop” it or “snapshot” it in print?