Liquid Publications

Elaine Morgan, in the New Statesman magazine demonstrates, using a very interesting example, how the Internet is changing scientific debate. According to her article Here Comes Everybody, "in the 1960s, Sir Alister Hardy (an Oxford Professor) suggested that several features distinguishing human beings from apes could be most readily explained if our earliest ancestors had inhabited a semi-aquatic environment, rather than having lived on the open plains, as was generally believed. At the time, Hardy's peers wrote him off as a crackpot. Now, 48 years later, there is strong support for the aquatic idea on the internet. Yet, on most university campuses, the Aquatic Ape hypothesis is still treated as belonging to the lunatic fringe and unworthy of debate. It is on the web that the debate - both for and against - rages, at sites such as Riverapes and Primitivism. The internet as a source of information is messy, chaotic and often misleading. But it is a godsend when academic practices have stiffened into inflexibility and university luminaries are regarded, in all intellectual disputes, as the final court of appeal." Interestingly, a similar idea is being propagated in a wonderful project called Liquid Publications -- where the authors (Fabio Casati, Fausto Giunchiglia and Maurizio Marchese from the University of Trento), indicate the need for "evolutionary, collaborative, and composable scientific" contributions. The authors stress the need for involving the wider community in judging the merit of research findings, through a "social network", rather than a small set of members from the academic community (often a limited programme committee), who may have pre-set views on what contributions they wish to accept. The authors of the Liquid Publication document indicate that there is a need for "... a radically different evaluation method for publications and for authors, based on the interest they generate in the community and on their innovative contributions ... (peer reviews can be used as a complement). The method also encourages early dissemination of innovative results." An interesting view is provided about the need to balance quality of a contribution vs. quick dissemination of new ideas. An accompanying article -- Publish and Perish -- explains some of the background to this thinking. There is certainly a need to make better use of Web technologies in disseminating ideas, and avoid the necessity to use standard academic peer-review as a basis for selection of ideas. However, more needs to be thought about how content on the Web can be scruitized for quality (whatever that may mean). Perhaps, publishers of journals and text books, and those who compile "impact factors" of research publications, also need to think more about how such "Liquid Publications" can be made more acceptable as channels of dissemination and are considered as "reputable" as other (more traditional) sources.