Reshared post from +David Brin
Time for more open science? Publication in traditional scientific journals is too slow(peer review alone can take months) to keep up with the rapid pace of modern,networked, collaborative research. Prohibitively expensive, journals restrict access to research papers and data — largely available only to universities and libraries. This discourages cross-disciplinary fertilization. Alternatives include open access journals (arXiv and PLoS), as well as growing online communities such as MathOverflow and ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists, and citizen science sites (GalaxyZoo).
‘Open Science’ Challenges Journal Tradition With Web Collaboration
Many scientists want to open up an age-old system of submitting private research to commercial journals that they say is hidebound, expensive and elitist.
Ab-so-tootly, +Sophie Wrobel ! It's time to set aside a veritable "quill-and-inkwell" model when science has more sensible venues — particularly Google+ — to propagate advances and valuable discussions.