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Psychological Inquiry

An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory
Volume 23, 2012 - Issue 3
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TARGET ARTICLE

Scientific Utopia: I. Opening Scientific Communication

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Pages 217-243
Published online: 10 Sep 2012
 

Existing norms for scientific communication are rooted in anachronistic practices of bygone eras making them needlessly inefficient. We outline a path that moves away from the existing model of scientific communication to improve the efficiency in meeting the purpose of public science—knowledge accumulation. We call for six changes: (a) full embrace of digital communication; (b) open access to all published research; (c) disentangling publication from evaluation; (d) breaking the “one article, one journal” model with a grading system for evaluation and diversified dissemination outlets; (e) publishing peer review; and (f) allowing open, continuous peer review. We address conceptual and practical barriers to change and provide examples showing how the suggested practices are being used already. The critical barriers to change are not technical or financial; they are social. Although scientists guard the status quo, they also have the power to change it.

Acknowledgments

The authors have no financial interests concerning the content of this article. Thanks to Mark Brandt, Jamie DeCoster, Yarrow Dunham, Frank Farach, Mike Frank, Carlee Beth Hawkins, Ravi Iyer, Calvin Lai, Matt Motyl, N. Sriram, and Jelte Wicherts for helpful feedback.

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