I’m opting to make this a 10-minute post only because time constraints are pretty substantial today, and yet the topic is important to broach. Hopefully I’ll manage to come back to it later.
Via George Siemens, I’ve just run across a post by ReadWriteWeb (Lardinois, 2008) concerning a decision by RNA Biology to tie article publications into Wikipedia. RWW indicates:
“RNA Biology has decided to ask every author who submits an article to a newly created section of the journal about families of RNA molecules to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work.”
This decision is incredibly significant and I hope will inspire other academic journals to follow suit. At the risk of sounding naive, radical, or both, I’ve never understood the obsession with restricting access to information and publications. Significant research is taking place across the academy – and has been for hundreds of years – but as a member of the general public, you’re really hard pressed to know what it is, let alone how to find it.
I once discovered a paper I’d co-written that I can’t in fact gain access to, despite actually contributing to its creation. Granted this was many years ago, but the fact remains – at least in my mind – that restricting access to information limits is potential impact and instead hoards the information amongst a sort of echo chamber of academic discussion, many of whom are already familiar with the subject.
I’d go so far as to say that limiting access to information devalues it’s significance, and undermines it’s value to society.
In my view, wherever possible research needs to be shared as openly and widely as possible. This is how society benefits, this is how learners benefit, and indeed this is how researchers benefit. By making information freely and openly available we are able to collaborate more effectively, progress more quickly, and develop a much greater sense of collegial and scholarly community.
If an aim of education, research and learning is to make the greatest difference with the greatest impact, then perpetuating a policy of the hoarding of information amongst a selective group of people is in direct contrast to this and should be rallied against.
Opening this information up to Wikipedia and thus beginning to broach complex topics with the general public is an important step towards distributing the knowledge more widely.
Almost certainly there will be those who decry the prospect of opening up scholarly research to a cloud of anonymous editors, some of whom may have no existing expertise in the subject. Yet this is a key, very effective way to break out of the echo chamber and indeed start to engage with the wider public community.
References:
- Lardinois, Frederic (2008). “Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in Wikipedia or Perish”, ReadWriteWeb, 18 December 2008. Accessed 16 January 2008 from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/publish_in_wikipedia_or_perish.php
This article just came to my attention, tackling similare issues of open access and spreading the research findings to a wider (academic) audience:
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20090430200134133
Excellent! Thanks Giedre – I’ll take a look