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AcaWiki
Neeru · Oakland, Cambridge, Fremont (United States) · 31/7/2007 22:21
To make academic research both physically and intellectually accessible to the general public, and to provide a space for both researchers and the general public to interact with each other.
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Category: Science/research
Project end date: 26/7/2020 (4383 days to go)
Creation date: 31/7/2007 22:21
Development stage: deployment
city: Cambridge
country: United States
Other countries:
Main Language: English
Number of people involved: 5
Beyond providing an education, academic institutions are charged with being the centers of research. Research is conducted, and often supported by public funds, so we can continue to learn about ourselves, our community, and out environments. Investing in research is a great asset to society. However, the unfortunate problem is that in many cases this research is not available to the public. Because of copyright law, and academic culture, most findings from academic research are published in proprietary journals that require costly subscriptions in order to gain access. Oftentimes it is only those affiliated with a well-funded university who can gain access. Those who wish to continue to learn beyond their coursework, or everyday people who are interested in say, whether coffee is good or bad for you, or what’s the latest treatment for a rare disease they might have, are limited because they can’t access research. Furthermore, many academic papers are written with discipline-specific language that makes it hard for the general public, or even other academics from different fields to understand. However, oftentimes the key findings of these papers can be summarized into one short clearly expressed article. Forthcoming efforts like AcaWiki use open licensing, community, and the Internet to address these issues. AcaWiki aims to bring academic research outside the ivory tower and to self learners and the public. AcaWiki leverages the power of social software to produce Creative Commons-licensed, human-readable summaries of academic papers for the education and use of the general population. The project aims is to get a community of graduate students and academics to write two-to-three paragraph, short magazine-like summaries of academic papers and contribute them to the AcaWiki pool. Because copyright only applies in the written work, and not the ideas or data behind it, summaries of academic papers can be written and licensed under a Creative Commons BY (Attribution) license so they will be freely distributable on the Internet, and in hard copy throughout the world. With such a resource available, individuals, educators, and society benefit from increased access to scholarly research.
To add more value to the information, other contributors will be able to annotate, comment, or append information to the original entry, perhaps adding analogies, pictures, videos or other devices to make the information more easily understandable. Community members can also add value by creating “playlists” of summaries by stringing them together with segues to show how a particular stream of research has evolved over time so they can more quickly understand the “big picture.” For example, summaries of ten of the best academic papers that discuss the health affects of red wine can be strung together so they can be read and understood together, thus enabling a more holistic learning. Segues can be added between summaries explaining how different red wine articles are related to each other. Beyond these primary features, summaries of academic works can be translated into other languages so that citizens across the world can have access, and summaries can be marked up with machine-readable metadata so that machines can derive understandings from the content.
Under an advanced feature, researchers and members of the public will be able to link through to a discussion section for each of the articles, they can discuss, debate, and ask questions about the research. Discussion features in the Researcher Section create a feedback loop so that the researcher, experts in the field, graduate students, and the public can interact and further understanding. Original authors can also post supplementary materials such as data, or code so that others may attempt to replicate findings or build off the work. The Researcher Section will create a home for conversation, debate, and exchange of materials, fostering community and a sense of shared learning for researchers and the public.
We need people to contribute summaries of academic papers. Please become a participant!
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Revisioning iCommons
In 2005, iCommons was established as an outgrowth of Creative Commons with an objective to ‘advance the wider dissemination of non-commercial sharing of scientific, creative and other intellectual works by the general public’. Creative Commons was the sole member, guarantor and sponsor of the charity, providing organisational and financial support.
Today, iCommons has a small,... more
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