Someone commented on reddit that you guys spent $300,000 building this, where did you spend all that money? I felt like I’ve read through almost every page available here, other than a bunch of ideals I don’t see anything actually useful.

Maybe I’m missing something.

Almost all scientific research is at least partially funded with public money. That’s one good reason scientific literature should be public. Another good reason is the tremendous benefit to society promised by easier meta-analysis, and lower barriers for people outside academia to implement discoveries or even participate in research.

The only argument in favor of closed scientific literature seems to be as a way to compensate journals for being ‘producers’ of scientific literature. But unlike producers of popular music or films, journals don’t directly support the artists! Moreover, the collapse of publishing costs mean there is no longer a scarcity of publishing bandwidth, which means there is essentially no need for expensive ‘filters’ for scientific literature. Besides, all evidence suggests that collaborative filtering models are superior to peer review. Reddit’s simple voting system is one example; prediction markets are another interesting try.

Via reddit.

Proprietary barriers are antithetical to the science ideal, and so we see a great organizational irony in the diffuse distribution of knowledge in our information-age research situation. The journal-based arrangement can prove highly anti-scientific to anyone who asks ostensibly simple questions. It’s due for a change!