Dear colleagues,
Last week I attended the parisian Open Access week main event that was held at the Unesco. I evoked briefly the migntable project of a Wiki Research Journal that was discussed in september (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Research_Ideas ). It was received with a good deal of enthusiasm, both from scientists and from Unesco representatives.
So far, this concept seems very likely to materialize : only a bit of publicity could sufficed to attract several high-quality submissions. Three issues remain, nevertheless to be solved : *Technical issue : we probably need a specific wiki. Whereas not highly sophisticated, it should perhaps include some reading functions in order to make the journal main content easy to read and to refer to. *Scientific issue : the journal requires rather a broad and definite general thematic, in order to receive diverse and, yet, coherent submissions. Perhaps a focus on epistemological topics (open access…) or communication topics (wiki-system and so on…) could deem appropriate, as it would allow to go beyond disciplinary barriers. *Financial issue : a small grant from the WMF would be enough to start. As the journal is to rely on volunteer work, all we have to do is to ensure the technical bare necessities.
PCL