Area51.stackechange is a site for people to propose nascent mathoverflow-like sites. As a first pass experiment on open review and a reputation economy (while we develop or find a way to develop a more sophisticated model) could we get the community to support an Ecology Preprint stackechange? We could have NCEAS host preprint pdfs from validated authors (i.e., have a ecopreprint.stackechange user account) and an individual ‘question’ would concern people’s comments on a paper.
We’d ask the community to volunteer to post preprints there fore at least, say, 2 months for submission, and given them the option of including their ‘review’ trail, etc. when they submit their paper to a journal.
Users would shape things like tags, etc. as the do on any stackoverflow site.
Granted, ‘review’ would be public, with usernames revealed. But, it’s an experiment.
After running this for ~6 months, we survey participants about their experience.
Thoughts?
Comment from Dave: You’d need some journals and high profile people to buy-in before doing this.
There are also some alternative and, I think, open source versions of the UI and functionality of Stack Exchange, so it might not be necessary to go with the SE folks themselves. They may also be interested in supporting an experiment though. Advantages in both routes.
That’s great – any links? I think either way, this might be a very doable ‘experiment’ that could be setup in a matter of a month or two. The survey at the end would provide some incredibly valuable information about cultural reaction and ways forward. It’s definitely a blunt-edged experiment, but it would be a pretty big leap.
Ah, osqa is one.
Also, stacked and shapado.
So, either a) Mark, we could have NCEAS host this, or b) we just go the Area51 route and see if they’re willing to host this effort.
Thoughts – Mark?
I think this sounds feasible and potentially worthwhile. My only hesitation is due to concerns about wasting scientists’ time contributing to a framework that is shortlived. But if the ante is low enuf to participate, I think it is worth a shot and NCEAS would be happy to host the experiment.