Four futures for scientific and medical publishing

Editor—Abbasi et al are to be congratulated on their crystal ball gazing.1 Communication in the modern world is clearly changing, and even in the world of medical publishing the old ways are giving way to the new. Although Homer may make some minor changes, his children will never follow in his footsteps. The future belongs to Lisa. Smart and articulate, she will thrive in a milieu that she manipulates so that useful information will flow towards her. By participating in her online communities and achieving status in these groups, she will be the one who knows (or at least who knows who knows) the required information. Lisa will have accepted the basic precepts of the cluetrain manifesto (www.cluetrain.com), its essence being that communication in the modern world is based on continuous online conversations by email between service providers and clients, their immediacy and formality being somewhere between a letter and a telephone call. Lisa will participate continuously in her global conversations, irrespective of her physical location. The lines between her work and leisure will blur. Abbasi et al seem unsure as to how many journals there will be in Lisa world. They list the range as 0 to 1 million. Conversation is great, but we still need to separate the wheat from the chaff and the signal from the noise. Fortunately the internet has given us the answer—one—the Wikipedia concept, which has developed as a result of the open source software model using free (wiki) software (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine). The essential features are a revision control system, unrestricted editing of articles on the wiki by any registered member, unrestricted membership of the wiki, and the ability to fork articles (or see current versions at the same time). In addition, no copies are deleted and the newer versions of an article comprise the original article with all additions made cumulatively.