Tech & Biz

Science 2.0 Debuts at Scientific American

by biverson | January 17, 2008 at 11:37 pm

819 views | 4 Recommendations | 2 comments

Scientific American comes out boldly with a wiki experiment that invites readers to edit an article and weigh in on some of the "meta publishing" issues that crowd sourcing via wiki technology brings to science, including consideration of the impact of this kind of authoring on the careers of young scientists. This one merits some thought and tracking as it develops.

Welcome to a Scientific American experiment in "networked journalism," in which readers—you—get to collaborate with the author to give a story its final form.

The article, below, is a particularly apt candidate for such an experiment: it's my feature story on "Science 2.0," which describes how researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science. The draft article appears here, several months in advance of its print publication, and we are inviting you to comment on it. Your inputs will influence the article’s content, reporting, perhaps even its point of view.

So consider yourself invited. Please share your thoughts about the promise and peril of Science 2.0.—just post your inputs in the Comment section below. To help get you started, here are some questions to mull over: