The authors of the book Digital_Humanities take note of the new dynamics for the production of knowledge, questioning established practices while also suggesting intelligent mutations for the aging legitimation frameworks:
Some scholars and artists have published versions of their books online using paragraph-by-paragraph blogging software or other collaborative annotation and commenting engines. Not only does this repudiate the notion of intellectual property as something locked up by copyright and exclusive licensing agreements, it allows the authors to receive immediate feedback by hundreds of self-selecting peer reviewers …. Crowd-sourced evaluations of scholarly arguments … are transforming both the authorship function and conventional knowledge platforms: A book is not simply “finished” and “published,” but is now part of a much more dynamic, iterative, and dialogical environment that is predicated on versioning, crows-sourced models of engagement and peer review, and open-source knowledge and publication platforms.
How can a broader public, well beyond the scientific community, become involved while maintaining intellectual rigour and in respect for the specific requirements of given fields? What can knowledge-producing institutions learn from open collaborative models? Why restrict the possibility of acting on knowledge only to elite communities?