Science, Commerce and Wikipedia: Who Draws the Lines?

The first story begins with how Wikipedia inspired me to acquire a Kindle. The Kindle is a device that many have heard of, but few have seen. The devices have been significantly back ordered at Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) since they were first launched in November. Folks who have read this column over the years know that I am not alone in being less than overwhelmed with the state of the e-book scene. These were poorly conceived devices that cost too much and consumed too much power too quickly; these were books for which publishers offered ever-so-slight discounts off the retail price so that the entire thing was too much of a bother for too little gain.

I admit that in the back of my mind I wondered why Jeff Bezos would put Amazon's reputation on the line for a product with such a problematic lineage. Amazon did not have to have a Kindle in its arsenal; in fact, this company actually has its own products. I thought perhaps Bezos drank the same Kool-Aid that made Bill Gates predict that long before now we would all have tablet PCs that would cost less than US$1,000.

Experimental Feature?

Admittedly, at $400, the Kindle is not something most people would purchase without pondering -- unless you are Bill Gates, of course. But people do spend that amount for an iTouch or an iPhone from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and revel in its shiny coolness. However, February rolled around and I was prepping one of my lectures on trends in digital publishing, so I popped over to the Amazon site to see what was being said about the Kindle now. Imagine my surprise when our zippy commentator announces, "and you have free access to use Wikipedia whenever you want from your Kindle!"

I found this to be a curious endorsement. Was Amazon, which is a bookseller among other things, giving some official blessing to Wikipedia? In all the world of Webdom, was this the only site that the Kindle would have free access to? How would this work? How could you wall off Wikipedia from the rest of the Web?

As it turns out, if you dig (and you do have to dig to find the truth), the Kindle is actually prepared to do more than be a mere e-book reader. Highlighting Wikipedia is akin to saying that the Kindle works best with text-driven sites. And yes, these sites are freely searchable with Kindle -- for now. Dealing with the Amazon Kindle is a bit like navigating Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Labs (and these days you have to dig through three screens to get there). Amazon calls these features "experimental," and Google calls them "not ready for prime time." They share one quality though: You may see a feature today, you may not see it tomorrow, and we are not really telling you where we are going with it. In fact, I decided the only way to really know what the Kindle would do was to order it (and then send it back). But to my surprise, I didn't send it back. But I'll elaborate more on that on another day and in another column.

Confusing Open Access and Wikipedia

A curious controversy has been raised about open access (OA) content and Wikipedia. The article first appeared in The New Scientist and was quickly passed around the Web. Now what makes this story interesting is that it involves the American Physical Society and a group of physicists who find its copyright policy too restrictive. As reported in The New Scientist, the physicists were trying to reproduce derivatives of their work in Wikipedia. While this assertion is true, it was actually only one item on a list of desires that these researchers were seeking with a less restrictive license that involves wikis other than Wikipedia.

According to Bill Unruh, physics professor at the University of British Columbia, "As such it is not in our interest if someone else owns that output and prevents us from telling the world what it is that we have done. That telling can be in technical publications in journals, in online e-print archives, in online research services like quantiki, in technical talks, recorded and placed on the net, or in popularizing the research in places like Wikipedia."

First, the APS is already a fully green journal; in fact, it is the first green publisher. So as far as OA is concerned then, the APS has not only met but has helped set the standard for scientific and scholarly publishing. Still, Gene Sprouse, editor-in-chief of the APS journals, says that the society will review its copyright policy in May.

A Question of Rights

But the APS maintains that Wikipedia is not a scholarly research vehicle; it doesn't want it to be, and it doesn't have to be. In fact, APS has a policy that states: "Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought." This is wise; Wikipedia cannot be all things to all people.

As long-term OA advocate Stevan Harnad notes, "Wikipedia insists on all rights for its content, including commercial re-use. Commercial re-use is most definitely not part of OA and should not be. It is directly antithetical to OA." He adds: "A Green publisher lets an author post and re-use his own writings anywhere and in any way he likes -- except to re-sell it, or authorize a rival publisher to re-sell it. To ask a publisher to give this up too is to ask him to commit suicide, and for absolutely no reason."

So while this does not preclude a researcher from significantly rewriting his or her piece so that it would be consumable by a nonprofessional, the valid question could be raised about whether Wikipedia is the best place to do so, particularly if there is not a critical mass of qualified eyeballs to oversee any changes.