Legal Research

Open Medicine Wiki

By Simon Fodden

Open Medicine, the Canadian, open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal that launched two years ago as a consequence of some concerns about the independence of medical publishing, has pushed the boundaries yet again. They’ve placed a published article on a wiki and have invited readers to edit the piece in order to improve it. As their blog says simply:

This project explores the use of a wiki as an online collaborative tool for improving and updating peer-reviewed systematic reviews.

The article in question is “Asynchronous telehealth: a scoping review of analytic studies,” by Amol Deshpande, Shariq Khoja, Julio Lorca, Ann McKibbon, Carlos Rizo, Donald Husereau, Alejandro R Jadad Open Med 2009;3(2):39?61 [original: PDF, HTML; wiki]

The law prof, writer, editor and publisher in me is writhing with anxiety at the fate that could befall an article at the hands of the public, even a public that has to register first. But the technophile blurry-eyed visionary in me is very impressed. It would be surpassingly interesting to see a legal article — a book — undergo constant and widespread editing by the profession. Canadian Bar Review: interested?

Congratulations to this sister discipline for having the courage and foresight to lead the way.

(A sidenote: Slaw columnist and open access champion, John Willinsky, is listed as Publisher of Open Medicine.)

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).