The OneSci Network is an online research community built and operated by active scientists and researchers across various scientific disciplines. OneSci has many specific goals under one broad mission: building a web-portal that encompasses all things considered useful for conducting research.
What we hope to accomplish across a relative time-line:
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The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific information. For the first time ever, we have the ability to institute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge - collected, cataloged, written, and reviewed by scientists - with the guarantee of worldwide access. Yet, we have a science based on tradition which, as non-idealistic as it sounds, has a fairly good track record of eliminating submissions of random computer generated text. This system, however:
In turn, these publishing companies essentially provide two things: 1) they organize the peer review process (with no monetary compensation for reviewers, mind you); and 2) they have printing presses. The solution might seem too obvious, but here it is anyway: stop publishing for companies that take copyright permissions from you and your colleagues; start publishing and reviewing for journals that protect the authors' research under a GNU open access license.
Our peer-reviewed publishing system is built on trust. Trust that authors faithfully carry out their stated experiments, trust that reviewers objectively evaluate said experiments, and trust that publishing companies oversee such processes with an eye toward disseminating legitimate scientific findings. What happens when all three break down?
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously, these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance. We know this is a task that will take inside of a decade to accomplish fully. We don't expect established principle investigators to jump right into publishing to online journals.
However, if you too agree that publishing companies are taking too much control and money from the scientific process, and there exists a better solution to the publishing process, here are ways you can help:
Science performed in isolation is useless. Only through rich scientific discourse can we reach our maximum potential for efficiency and progress. Onesci.com was founded on this simple principle and is committed to facilitating communication between scientists of every discipline. We welcome you to join the conversation.
Bradley Monakhos and Jeremy Biane
We've all had 'em.
Those studies where p = 0.08; maybe you couldn't reproduce findings from another study; perhaps that interesting pilot study got triaged by the "more important" research priorities never to be followed-up on again. Maybe the findings were negative and the null hypothesis is *gasp* true. Whatever the case, in their pursuit of an ever-increasing impact factor, journals invariably eschew such findings, leaving a large and vital chunk of scientific inquiry unshared.
One of the main purposes of this site is to disseminate findings that, despite sound scientific method, do not reach threshold for traditional publication.
The website is growing quickly but is still relatively young, so we invite you to share any thoughts about the future direction of onesci.com and what this site might try to accomplish under this general idea on the Recorded potentials page (you must sign up to edit).
To qualify for membership you need to provide some proof of holding PhD, MD, or have an article published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. We reserve the right to make exceptions to this criteria (and even change the criteria) if we feel that it would be within the best interest of our current members.
It's really easy. We hope you decide to become part of our community!
All information published here is covered under the GNU free documentation license, which starts:
| “ | The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. | ” |
Wikipedia does not want original research. They actually have a policy called WP:NOR, which states "Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position."
OneSci wants original research. Not only that, we want you to talk endlessly about your original research. We want a lengthy discussion to start about your original research. We want debate. Most importantly, one way or another, we want the next experiment that any researcher performs to be positively impacted in some way by their willingness to share ideas with their peers on this site.