Friday, December 19, 2008

Wikipedia Goes Legit?

Interesting move from the journal RNA Biology. I guess it's the "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude. I think it's a good move for all involved- RNA Biology gets access to a larger audience, wikipedia gets scholarly contributions from scientists, and the scientists begin moving toward digital scholarship. I hope to see more journal make the move to wikipedia.Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in Wikipedia or Perish
Every day, hundreds of articles appear in academic journals and very little of this information is available to the public. Now, 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. As Nature reports, this is the first time an academic journal has forced its authors to disseminate information this way. The initiative is a collaboration between the journal and the RNA family database (Rfam) consortium led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Every new Wikipedia page will go through the same peer review process as the original article, though afterward, of course, the pages are open for editing just like every other page in the Wikipedia.

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