Talk:Mathematical biology/Signed Articles/Biology's next microscope: Mathematics

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A test case for wiki-style scholarly interaction

On the occasion of this article appearing at CZ, I wish to raise a few issues related to it in a wider context, and I simply post them here, as I do not know of a better place (I do not find the forum suitable):

• I think this article could make for a good test case in terms of assessing the potential of wikis for scholarly interaction, as advocated by initiatives like OpenWetWare and especially at a time when the Original Research Policy at CZ is being discussed, while others have started to collect arguments why traditional journal-style publications should be abandoned altogether. We're not there yet, though, and I certainly view PLoS Biology amongst the most progressive journals currently around (that's why I plan to present CZ and Biology Week there, see here - readers of these lines are welcome to join in).
• Back to the article, I wonder how to treat such a large-scale citation. One way would be to put it onto a subpage (e.g. Mathematical biology) and leave it as it is, perhaps allowing for reformatting to CZ style. Another option could be to colour-code the original phrasing differently than subsequent edits here at CZ, at least as an option to the page viewer. With time, the article could then evolve from a representation of the state of the art into one of the history of the state of the art in the subject it covers. In principle, this could be done to many other articles, licensing permitting.
• Even though "Group editing encouraged" should be considered the default of wiki type environments like this one, I welcome Tony explicitly stating it again on this month's Write-a-thon page in relation to this article, since many of the articles here are edited by very few people (at least before suggested approval), much similar to scholarly traditions. Yet a wiki like this has a wider potential! I am thus glad to see initiatives like Workgroup Weeks or London Research Day which encourage collaborative editing, and I would like to see it more often in Eduzendium, too (e.g. by means of {{EZarticle-open-auto}}, which I will try in a summer school course later this year).

Daniel Mietchen 04:50, 5 June 2008 (CDT)