Nature Medicine 2.0

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Nature Medicine 2.0
A pretty ridiculous editorial, really. One would have thought more of Nature. "Everybody will eventually be famous to 15 people," reads the editorial. "In such a world, is there room for journals like Nature Medicine?" What appears obvious is that they haven't been paying attention - nothing in the 2.0 world prevents something from being widely popular (see next item). What changes is this: while the Nature editorial says, disingenuously, "Scientific journals, as it turns out, are also information providers," it means that scientific journals are not the only information providers, and that publications need to compete on the basis of merit, not on the basis of prestige or being the sole supplier in a monopoly market. Do we really have "a world divided into small tribes (some of which could well fit in a family minivan), in which the safety of being one of many people able to express their points of view has replaced the authority of experts?" No. More...