AcaWiki.org : Wikipedia for academic research

October 19, 2009 by Colby · Comments
Filed under: Nutrition 2.0, Wikis 

AcaWiki is a very promising project that utilizes semantic wiki software (modified mediawiki software, the same that wikipedia uses) to allow “scholars, students, and bloggers to easily post summaries, and discuss academic papers online. All content posted to the site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.”

Launched a couple weeks ago, it seems to have gotten quite a bit of press already, and some have started adding article summaries to the site.

I plan on periodically contributing to the Health subjects, here is an example I posted about a recent paper on Arachidonic Acid and cognitive function in elderly men.  It is very easy to do and if enough people regularly contribute, a great open source health database could be built.  Professionals who may not have time to critically read a paper could instead check the wiki for a summary or for collaborative literature reviews in which the publishing process currently in place has limitations (time it takes for retractions, modifications, comment replies, etc to be published).  And certainly there are knowledgeable people outside of academia who can contribute as well.

Why do we need this?

The number of research papers that are published continues to grow and it is now nearly impossible to read them all in your own area of expertise let alone maintain an accurate interdisciplinary perspective (which in health fields is necessary to maintain an expertise).  Although less than ideal (summaries of course cannot substitute thoroughly dissecting methodologies), an objective, peer reviewed area like AcaWiki for summarizing individual papers or for literature reviews is important.  Instead of each person attempting to absorb decades worth of research in many fields, the power of crowdsourcing can catch us up to speed on interesting research.

I see this as a resource between the full published papers themselves and the often unreliable media reporting of new research.  If the right people contribute, projects like this could do very well for disseminating information further than it may go otherwise, more accurately than ever before.

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