The Selected Papers Network
Posted by John Baez
Here it is at last: the Selected Papers Network. Given that social networks already exist, all we need for truly open scientific communication is a convention on a consistent set of tags and IDs for discussing papers. Christopher Lee, in bioinformatics at UCLA, has developed software that makes this work. Try it out!
What’s cool about this system is that it’s federated. Instead of locking up your comments within its own website—the “walled garden” strategy followed by many other service—it explicitly shares these data in a way that people not on the Selected Papers Network can easily see. Any other service can see and use them too.
To learn about the problems that make us want this system, read this:
To learn how the system works, and to try it out, go here: