On Nov 5, 2012, at 2:39 AM, Jodi Schneider wrote:

On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 12:57 AM, Ward Cunningham <ward@c2.com> wrote:
I wonder if a better place to innovate might be in the conduct of research, rather than the reporting, review and publication of research?

+1*

Regarding the existing conversation, if we want a journal, we need to ask what the purpose is.

I'd highly recommend Jason Priem's notion of the "decoupled journal" [1][2]. Jason points out that journals have been used for four main purposes, historically:
  1. Registration
  2. Archiving
  3. Dissemination
  4. Certification

Having now caught up on Jason Priem I will say that he raises good points about "refactoring" journals. 

Jody and others have correctly pointed out:

* of course, reporting and doing research aren't an either/or -- they're closely related and one drives the other

Jason argues that twitter, etc, can be mined to create a new and faster version of "Certification" (I simplify). This seems right but also transient in that online habits change so rapidly. Perhaps they change because we move from service to service looking for the one with the schema (and thus, community) we need at the moment.

Wiki started with almost no schema and remains light in this regard today. This favor's innovation while it complicates interpretation. My own suspicion is that wiki's low-schema is better suited for the "laboratory" than the "journal", at least as a journal is currently conceived. Wiki may be well suited for a "refactored" journal, simply because it makes experiments easy, and this is what makes Jason's premise apropos.

Best regards. -- Ward