"The Next Scholarly Communication"?

(I know this is a very long post but it is interesting. It is cut from Gerry McKiernan's latest offering to the
SPARC-OAForum@arl.org)

Colleagues

As some may be aware, I have long proposed The Wiki as The Next Scholarly
Communication/Publishing Environment
Gerry McKiernan. "Disruptive Scholarship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Re(Use) / Re(Mix) / Re(New)." Invited keynote presentation delivered at
Transforming Practice for An Authentic Future, 3rd International
Conference on Plagiarism, June 23-25, 2008, Northumbria University,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Director' Cut version self-archived at:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/IPC2008-DC.ppt (30 August 2008)
"Wikis: Disruptive Technologies for Dynamic Possibilities," Invited
presentastion delivered at Digital Libraries à la Carte: Choices for the
Future. Module 2: Technological Developments: Threats and Opportunities
for Libraries, Tilburg Innovation Centre for Electronic Resources BV
(TICER), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, August 23, 2005.
Self-archived at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/TICER2005.ppt
(30 August 2008)

Thanks To Bernie Sloan, Sora Associates, Bloomington, Indiana has have
learned about a wiki called Mememoir and its associated implementation in
the WikiGenes project that I believe is a A Major Realization of The
Disruptive Scholarship Vision
"Reporting in [the September 2008 issue] Nature Genetics, scientist Robert
Hoffmann develops the first Wiki where authorship really matters. Based on
a powerful authorship tracking technology, this next generation wiki links
every word to its corresponding author. This way readers can always know
their sources and authors receive due credit.
[snip]

Clear authorship attribution in this next generation wiki makes it also
possible that users can rate each other based on their contributions. For
the first time, collaborative publishing can therefore be enhanced with
the advantages of a reputation system. Hoffmann describes how a
self-regulating reputation system can help to settle editing conflicts,
which were an important problem in first generation wikis and used to
depend on slow and refutable top-down decisions.
The scientific wiki project, introduced in the September issue of Nature
Genetics and released online today, is the first of its kind and a
milestone in the Mememoir project. "This release is an important proof of
principle, but our ambitious aim with the Mememoir project is to
revolutionize publishing in all of science," says Dr. Hoffmann, "with a
knowledge base that is open access, interdisciplinary and combines the
altruistic possibilities of wikis with explicit authorship."
Robert Hoffman / A Wiki for the Life Sciences Where Authorship Matters /
Nature Genetics / volume 40 / number 9 / 1047 - 1051 /September 2008 /
Published online 27 August 2008 / doi:10.1038/ng.f.217
Access to sample text from the paper as well as links to the full text of
the article (for subscribers (?)) in HMTL and PDF format as well as links
to the WikiGenes site and associated components (e.g., Introduction &
Tutorial, Sample 'Author' Contribution Page, Sample 'Author' Contribution,
etc.) are available at
[ http://tinyurl.com/582jq2 ]

Please share your thoughts/reactions/etc as a Comment on the entry for
this posting on the Scholarship 2.0 blog
BTW: Recommendations Of Any And All Other Radical Scholarly Wikis
Like/UnLike Mememoir / WikiGenes Are Most Welcome.
Regards,
Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu