Wikis for the win

Pretty much everyone with access to the internet is well aware of the concept of wikis – websites that allow anyone with access to create, edit and update pages.  Wikipedia has become such a staple in most people’s lives that we head there whenever we want to learn the basics about the Ottoman Empire or check out the latest NHL draft. Health and medicine account for hundreds of pages within wikipedia (there is even a medicine portal), and there are numerous other wikis available in this field (Ask Dr Wiki, Ganfyd (Get a Note from Your Doctor), HLWiki and many others) available for editing by both health professionals and mere mortals alike.

Open Medicine: A new dawn

This week, however, my class was introduced to Open Medicine. Dr Anita Palepu (creator) described her passion for the site, describing how commonly research that is funded by the tax payer, and which uses regular people (patients), is frequently published in journals where only the privileged few have access. Open Medicine is fully open access, meaning that it is free from the spatial, temporal and financial constraints of many journals, meaning that anyone with access to the internet has access.  You can find out more in my classmate’s blog here.

But open access journals have existed for years, so what makes Open Medicine so special? Well, it is the world’s first ‘wikified’ journal, which aims to combine high quality peer-reviewed research with the best of wikis (editable, fast). Touted as an ‘experiment’ the journal allows anyone to edit (although anonymous editing is not allowed, and those who sign up are required to declare any conflicts of interest). There are plenty of possible benefits of such a site (as well as the obvious fears – eg. will editing retain the high quality of the original research?), but one of the ideas that particularly appeals to me is the ‘work in progress’ systematic reviews- as new evidence becomes available, people will be able to add it to the existing body of information. I love this idea that journal articles are not static, but that they could evolve with time. This could be a huge time saver for doctors (and others) who need rapid access to the full extent of current, evidence-based literature, ideally synthesized for usability.

And the future…?

The website is growing in readership, with followers around the world, although the largest audience right now is in North America. So far, Dr Palepu commented that they have been surprised by how few people have chosen to edit the articles, but I have to say I’m not too surprised. There are various issues to content with, not least the tradition element (“scientific journals contain gospel truth”), the fear element (“I don’t want to change it and look stupid if I’m wrong”) and the time element (“I’ll do it later…”). I believe that as social media becomes more inherent in professional and research society, we will likely move towards a more involved two-way authorship, but it will probably take time before people feel fully confident to adjust to this new way of thinking.  Fingers crossed!

It will be interesting to watch how this experiment unfolds – will other journals take note and provide similar editability?  Will more and more high profile researchers be willing to subject their research to the scrutiny of the populous?  It will be exciting to follow this project and see where it goes.