So researchGate is kind of an interesting idea. As is this this New York Times article on the future of science publishing. I happen to agree that science publishing is due for a major makeover, but I don't think its replacement is out there yet. PLoS One has a lot going for it, as do other open access journals, but they don't bring us closer to the thing I really want to see: real time science publication.

I'm not totally sure that it's a desirable end, since a lot of what gets done in paper writing (careful description of methods, bringing together disparate data into one story, filling in logical holes with supporting experiments) only gets done because of the hurdle of publication. But imagine how many small, interesting, positive results never get published because they don't fit in with such a complete narrative required by a paper. Or, for that matter, the number of negative results.

What if, at the end of the day, everyone just blogged their science. You'd put a blurb about your methods, a blurb about your results, maybe a picture of your gel, sequencing results, graph, whatever, and let it run free on the internet. I can think of 2 or 3 figures that I plan to put into a forthcoming paper that I wish I didn't have to wait to share.

What are the down sides? Well a blog is less permanent than a publication, which gets archived and saved in about a hundred different places. It also is hard to put on your CV. Moreover, do people really want to go to someone's blog to learn what their lab is doing, or would they much prefer a scientific paper, which is sort of a digest version? Finally, does it actually advance science if everyone can know what everyone else is doing at all times? Would people continue to have the drive to publish first to avoid being scooped? Would there be even less reward for replicating past results, since you could in theory check to make sure you were the only one working in your area?

The expanding ecosystem is not without problems, but it's interesting to see what is created in the years ahead.