Could this be another milestone in the evolution of academic publishing? Scholarpedia is the first "free peer reviewed encyclopedia" – a kind of morphing of open access publishing with wiki technology.
Initial reactions may be: "Oh god, not another Wikipedia wannabe!", especially as the ink is barely dry on Larry Sanger's Citizendium manifesto, which he described as a "progressive fork" of the Mother of All Free Online Encyclopedias. But this one could be very different.
Although it was suffering from a few gremlins when we took a look, it has quite a potential to disrupt existing publishing models. For a start it takes the headache out of having to set up and maintain an online publishing operation if you're an academic or group of scholars inclined to develop your own OA journal.
Eugene M Izhikevich, editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia, points out its based on the same MediaWiki technology engine behind Wikipedia, and that's now a pretty proven force. The difference with Wikipedia is that each article in the encyclopedia has an expert editor attached to it as a "curator", who approves all changes and effectively ensures the actual article is an approved version.
What sets it apart from Citizendium is that it is not as elitist. Anyone can suggest changes to an article, and there's an anonymous forum for initial peer review. It appears far more inclusive and less obsessed with creating something worthy of "intellectuals".
With concerns continuing to mount about errors in Wikipedia (many put there for malicious reasons) and even hackers using it to hide malware, then something more managed and controlled like this may well be an answer to feely available scholarship online.
Scholarpedia has also narrowed its initial ambitions by restricting itself to just three disciplines: Computational Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems, and Computational Intelligence. Izhikevich describes them as "seeds" that could branch out into related disciplines. Then all sorts of fields could come into play. Few people expected Wikipedia to grow into the phenomenon it has become.
Will Scholarpedia be the second generation wiki that really makes the grade?
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