The authors begin by depicting the traditional path along which scholarly publications tread, critiquing such issues as the need to publish new editions and articles when new evidence is found, the lack of context for citations, and the retraction of articles/books due to scientific misconduct. The authors present the issues involved with current publications systems and how they impede on the pursuit of dynamic knowledge creation processes. They claim that the production process is not visible to the reader, that the contribution of individual authors are not visible (including honorary authorships), mistakes cannot be corrected, and scientific discourse around a publication cannot occur (or if there is discourse, those authoring the comments are not credited). There is also a high risk among authors of being accused of plagiarism for reusing certain parts of other texts, resulting in unnecessary rewording and a greater workload. This renders the question of how one might locate the new contributions to the scientific field? In addition, there are legal and technical hurdles to reusing content, despite the increased possibilities of sharing and development of dynamic publication formats with the inception of the Internet. The authors proceed to examine the positive aspects of dynamic publication formats to bring publication up to the times with the Internet’s possibilities. Dynamic publications can evolve, trace who authored which ideas/theories that led to a contribution, provide an openness via working versions of works, and allow for innovative forms of remixing and reuse. The authors depict the ways in which dynamic publishing is already being implemented, including via blogs, open peer-review processes in some journals, wikis, and stack exchange. The authors conclude by asserting that SNS for scientists may be the ideal platform to realize a dynamic publication system due to their mixture of multiple opportunities to interact and engage with other users.
Analytic (Question)
Everyone can view this content
On