Thanks to Alain for this great spoof of the phenomenally succesful Second Life which even has its own Reuters correspondent.
I hope that all that time building virtual lives is going to make us more participative in real communities.
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One of the main ways that academic publishers add value is in facilitating the peer review process to ensure that journal articles meet required standards.
Along with all the other upheavals within the publishing industry, there was an idea that peer review could bypass this mediation, facilitated by the internet. Peer review is not perfect – it is time-consuming, often political and not without its flaws.
It appears that the time for this idea has not yet come, as trial by the innovative Nature journal of ‘open review’ has been ended because of the lack of participation. Big news, this even made it onto the BBC Today programme.
In all my research among academics, there is always a warm endorsement of peer review for maintaining high standards but these are busy people with reputations they try hard to build and protect. They often want some anonymity and often need to be encouraged or (kindly) pestered to do it by persuasive Editors.
Open review may be more successful within smaller communities of academics than the broader reach of Nature readers.
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The internet TV station Joost (formerly the Venice Project) has launched at least in a trial version that people can now download. The BBC reports on it here. They say they are trying to replicate the TV experience but it’s really about getting good quality pictures on a computer screen.
They are facing some competition (in the UK) from BT, Channel 4 and Babelgum.
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This week’s Freepint newsletter has an interesting insider’s view on the sudden withdrawal of the paid Google Answers service.
It seems a shame. People can now find lots of free information that satisfies their needs, not only with the free search tools but also using free human services like Amazon’s recently launched Askville and Yahoo Answers.
But there is a huge market for professionals to find and create high quality answers in services such as Bitwine and Experts Exchange.
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How interesting to see the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, is planning to create a people-powered search site.
He claims that existing search mechanisms are broken because they lack freedom, community, accountability and transparency.
The net is so vast and Google so dominant that I can’t imagine this will have much success. And who is ultimately going to pay for all this effort? Even the well-established Wikipedia looks set to fail.
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Have an enjoyable, successful and peaceful 2007.
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