Peter Suber’s fantastic Open Access blog brings news of a revolutionary open-access journal in the works called “Philica.” The journal is designed to promote immediate publication of works and post-publication peer review, via reviews by others in the journal’s network.
What’s the journal’s discipline? Anything–which I think is its most radical innovation (and perhaps its Achilles heel). I like the idea that anyone can join the scholarly conversation, a principle nicely exemplified in the Nessons’ new course at Harvard. (Here’s the trailer–check out the trippy video-game-inspired metaverse it presents!)
But I think that, for now, these sorts of efforts should start *within* disciplines, just to assure some common terms of reference. So if anyone’s interested in starting something like a Philica for law (or cyberlaw), let me know! It’s not exactly a project I could prioritize now, but it would be fun to discuss and perhaps put into place in the future.
PS: I intend “trippy” in its best sense as a description of the “Second Life” set up in the Nessons’ course, but I see from this dictionary that there’s an ongoing struggle to define the word. It’ll be interesting to see whether it’s ultimately given a negative or positive connotation.