Publish in Wikipedia � or Perish?

Via ReadWriteWeb comes this story from Nature that any scientist that submits an article to the journal RNA Biology for their new section on RNA molecules, must also create a Wikipedia page summarizing their work.

"The novelty is that for the first time it creates a link between Wikipedia and traditional journal publishing, with its peer-review element," says Alex Bateman, who co-heads the Rfam database. The aim, Bateman says, is to boost the quality of the scientific content on Wikipedia while using the entries to update the Sanger database.

RNA Biology will require Wikipedia pages from all authors who submit work to a new section of the journal, to be launched later this week, that describes families of RNA molecules. The first paper scheduled is "A Survey of Nematode SmY RNAs"¹; its corresponding Wikipedia summary can be found here.

And it appears as though they�ve given this some thought and have experimented with other entries to Wikipedia, as there�s also a database they�ve been building that gets synchronized with Wikipedia every night.

The Sanger Institute created the Rfam database in 2005, and it now contains data on about 1,200 RNA families from some 200 complete genome sequences. Sanger last year started to experiment with the idea of using Wikipedia to improve the database. It set up an RNA subsection on the encyclopaedia, called RNA WikiProject ², which has the same entries as those on the Rfam database. The database is synchronized each night with Wikipedia, so that any changes made to the Wikipedia pages are transferred to the corresponding entries in the Rfam database.

Bateman says he has been "pleasantly surprised" by scientists' willingness to edit the RNA Wikipedia pages. Most of the edits are made by a core group of around 15 researchers, but there's a long tail of other scientists who pop in sporadically, he says, often to fix or add information about molecules specific to their research.

Hopefully, this will be the start of a trend of other scientific journals doing the same thing.

The RNA wiki is a subset of a broader project, the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which has marshalled hundreds of scientists to improve the content of biology articles in Wikipedia. It, in turn, is collaborating with the Novartis Research Foundation on GeneWiki ³, an effort to create Wikipedia articles describing every human gene. Beyond Wikipedia itself, scientists are also increasingly using wiki technology to get scientists to help curate other biological databases (see Nature 455, 22�25; 2008).

You should read through the comments on the Nature post as well, including this one by Bill Wedemeyer from Michigan State:

Over the past two years, I and some of my students at Michigan State University have carried out an analysis of the coverage, quality and stability of the scientific articles on the English Wikipedia. We've analyzed hundreds of randomly sampled articles from the basic sciences, and have had roughly 100 articles reviewed by tenured professors expert in the field. Our data, being written up for publication, do not support Mr. Kohs' hypothesis that the RNA articles will degenerate into vandalism-riddled nonsense. On the contrary, we found that the developed articles (the so-called Featured, A-level and Good Articles) are stable and of reliably good quality. I presented our preliminary findings at a conference in July. I applaud Dr. Bateman and his colleagues for their initiative, which seems a promising method for outreach, connecting the scientific world with the public that usually pays for the research. We all hope for "broader impact", and this initiative seems likely to be effective.

Perhaps I�m just being optimistic this morning (I tend to alternate days, or sometimes hours), but I think this holds real promise for realizing the potential of Wikipedia and other socially co-constructed content.

My Personal Learning Network in Action

This article was originally published in the March/April 2008 issue of ISTE�s Learning & Leading with Technology. I�m cross-posting it here because it�s much more meaningful with links, plus it�s more likely I�ll read a comment here than if you write it in the margins of the magazine. As a side note, I found it very difficult to write a column for Bloggers Caf� with a due date that was two months before publication. And, of course, I found it very hard to write something that was only 500 words or so!



We�ve spent a lot of time at my school thinking about the concept of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). We live in an age of information abundance. Our students need to learn how to find, evaluate, organize, synthesize, remix and re-purpose information in order to understand and solve complex problems.

A PLN isn�t a particularly new idea; learning networks have existed for a long time. What�s new is the reach and extent that�s now possible for a PLN, with technology and global interconnectedness providing the opportunity for a much wider, richer and more diverse PLN than ever before. This is a complex topic that can�t be fully addressed in a short article, but let me provide an example of my own learning that resulted from my PLN.

I�ve been a big proponent of publishing student work on the web, of using Web 2.0 tools to provide our students with a wider, often more authentic audience. But I�ve struggled with the quality of that work and question whether publishing student work that at times is pretty mediocre is such a good thing after all. My PLN helped me think more deeply about this.

Christian Long posted, �are we really prepared to drown in a sea of "just good enough" presentations.� That led me to several posts by Dan Meyer, �But if they and their teachers aren't immersing themselves constantly in better, clearer work than their own . . . work which for the first time in history is available freely and quickly, how in that vacuum can they rise to any greater occasion?� Dan led me to read Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (books are still part of my PLN). Both Dan and Carolyn Foote led me to a post by Garr Reynolds, �Perhaps if all of us smart experts, with our massive intellects, tried to approach problems with �the beginner's mind� we could get much better at solving problems.� A couple of posts by Vicki Davis got me thinking again about how it takes a �special kind of individual to make connections to be able to see things that specialists on their own cannot see. How do we teach that?�

I had multiple conversations with teachers in my school to further refine my thinking (direct conversation is still part of my PLN). Finally, I came upon a post and a Technology, Entertainment, Design talk by Larry Lessig, who suggested that the �read/write culture� is �a literacy for this generation.�

My thinking has evolved; I have a more refined, nuanced viewpoint on students publishing their work on the web. I believe even more strongly this is something we need to do with students, but I�m also thinking more critically about how to nurture the quality of that work.

As I envision the future, I think it�s critical for our students to create, nurture and expand their PLNs. It�s also critical to include varied viewpoints in our PLNs, to make sure we don�t continually reinforce our already held beliefs. I thank the members of my PLN for all they�ve taught me and encourage all of you to help your students � and yourselves � develop powerful, meaningful and effective PLNs.


Due to space limitations, I couldn�t include this portion with a very long quote from Howard Rheingold that I think is relevant.

A post by Will Richardson led me to an article by Howard Rheingold writing about the importance of developing critical and analytic skills:

Loss of certainty about authority and credibility is one of the prices we pay for the freedom of democratized publishing. We can no longer trust the author to guarantee the veracity of work; today�s media navigators must develop critical skills in order to find their way through the oceans of information, misinformation, and disinformation now available. The ability to analyze, investigate, and argue about what we read, see, and hear is an essential survival skill. Some bloggers can and do spread the most outrageously inaccurate and fallaciously argued information; it is up to the readers and, most significantly, other bloggers to actively question the questionable. Democratizing publishing creates a quality problem, the answer to which is�democratizing criticism. Critical thinking is not something that philosophers do, but a necessary skill in a mediasphere where anybody can publish and the veracity of what you read can never be assumed.

I would also highly recommend that anyone interested in learning more about Personal Learning Networks regularly read both Will Richardson�s and Clarence Fisher�s blogs, as well as the work of George Siemens on Connectivism.

"Open Up the World of Learning to Everyone Who Wants to Learn"

From the New York Times:

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish � on the Web, at least � free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday�s vote would apply only to Harvard�s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university�s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

�In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,� said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. �It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.�

Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased � including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them.

What distinguishes this plan from current practice, said Stuart Shieber, a professor of computer science who is sponsoring the faculty motion, is that it would create an �opt-out� system: an article would be included unless the author specifically requested it not be. Mr. Shieber was the chairman of a committee set up by Harvard�s provost to investigate scholarly publishing; this proposal grew out of one of the recommendations, he said.

Interesting addition to The Cult of the Amateur arguments. At least one professor isn't buying some of those arguments:

Professor Shieber also doubts that free distribution would undermine the journal industry. "We don�t know if that would happen,� he said. �There is little evidence to support that it would." Nearly all scholarly articles on physics have been freely available on the Internet for more than a decade, he added, and physics journals continue to thrive.

20th Century Artifact of the Day

Today's Parade Magazine insert in the Sunday paper has a very nice article about Benazir Bhutto and how she might be America's best hope in Pakistan - 10 days after she was assassinated.

Online Parade explains that the assassination occurred after the print magazine went to press and has some links to a slide show and to Gail Sheehy (the writer of the article) talking on cable tv.

I understand that getting Parade printed and distributed to papers around the country is a huge undertaking, but 10 days still seems like enough time to figure something out. Hmmm.

Paper Is A Great Medium?

It seems only fair since I linked to The Denver Post earlier this week to also blog about an article in Denver's other paper, the Rocky Mountain News. This article is actually a column from John Temple, who is editor and publisher of the paper. (He also has a blog, but he hasn't posted since January.)

The Rocky Mountain News has been doing some interesting experiments with their use of the web (including YourHub), and Temple writes about it fairly frequently and transparently. I think they are really trying to get their collective heads around how best to use the Internet - and of course how to stay solvent - so I'm not trying to be critical of their overall efforts. But this paragraph in his column made me stop and think.

. . . reporting a story online while it breaks doesn't weaken coverage in the newspaper. If anything, it actually strengthens it. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, by writing about events as they happen and as new details emerge, we learn how to shape more thoughtful packages for print. The Web is a great medium for breaking news. That's where you should turn to us to find out the latest. The paper by definition can't be real-time. It's at best a few hours old. But the paper is a great medium for analysis, perspective, depth and memorable storytelling, both visual and in words.

I pretty much agree with all of this. But that last sentence really makes me wonder,

But the paper is a great medium for analysis, perspective, depth and memorable storytelling, both visual and in words.

While that certainly is often true, I don't see where the "paper" part is critical to that sentence. Because can't they offer "analysis, perspective, depth and memorable storytelling" online, and actually offer more of it? With links to even more information? And then when you throw in "visual," doesn't the web offer much more opportunity, "space", and medium choices to the mix? To a larger audience? With more timely, convenient, economical, and environmentally-friendly delivery? And when you throw in blogs or other Web 2.0 tools, doesn't it offer the possibility of much more interaction than the print version? Then toss in search and pretty much unlimited archive capability, and doesn't that sentence strike you as perhaps missing the mark just a bit?

I know that many folks still prefer to read a newspaper in print rather than online. In fact, when I read a newspaper (which I do less and less of, at least in the traditional print sense), so do I. And the portability and readability of paper still triumphs technology for most people. But I think the technology will advance sufficiently in the next 7 to 10 years that that may no longer be the case. So I found it interesting that in an article about the changes they were making, and specifically about how they were trying to better integrate the web into their work, that the "justification" if you will of the value of the print edition wasn't really much of a justification (at least to me). In fact, it could've just as easily been a "justification" for an announcement that they were ceasing publication of the print edition altogether and moving to just an online version.

So, ignore the "I prefer to read it in print rather than online" issue for the moment (since I'm focusing more on what he decided to include in his column, and he didn't include that). Please read the entire column first to get the big picture of what he's saying, then what are your thoughts - does this strike you the same way as it did me?