Online Collaborative Writing: How Blogs And Wikis Are Changing The Academic Publishing Process
January 29th, 2010Is online collaborative writing the recipe to change the academic publishing process? Are blogs and wikis going to subvert the way academics publish and distribute their work?
Photo credit: Tecnologia Pyme.
Academics have long operated within a system of peer reviewed scholarship. The research process is seen as incomplete until a group of anonymous experts has commented on and approved a paper prepared according to specific criteria. Only then can the work be published in an academic journal.
Publishing a piece of research in such a way demonstrates the author’s legitimacy within a community of scholars, and such publications are the basis for advancement in any academic field.
This has been the story until now. But what if this oligarchic publishing model were challenged by a new collaborative paradigm that involved a larger group of people to review and legitimize an academic paper?
The academia could use well-established online collaboration tools like blogs and wikis to tear down those self-erected walls that separate scholars from the rest of the world and allows professors to receive feedback and critiques only by other so-called “experts“.
In this fascinating article, Janelle Ward tries to make greater sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the current academic publishing model while suggesting a new approach to academic publishing that leverages the power of the web.
Here all the details:
