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specializing in adult content, and Larry Sanger, a philosopher who left academia to work with Wales on online encyclopedias. In the early days of Wikipedia there was little involvement from scientists. This was despite the fact that anyone in the world can edit Wikipedia, and, in fact, it’s written entirely by its users. So here’s this incredibly exciting project, which anyone can get involved in, which is taking off rapidly, and which expresses core scientific values. Why weren’t scientists lining up to be involved? The problem is the same as with the genetic data: why would scientists take the time to contribute to Wikipedia when they could be doing something more respectable among their peers, like writing a paper? That’s the kind of activity that leads to jobs, grants, and promotions. It doesn’t matter that contributing to Wikipedia might be more intrinsically valuable. In the early days work on Wikipedia was seen by scientists as frivolous, a waste of time, as not being serious science. I’m happy to say that this has changed over the years, and today Wikipedia’s success has to some extent legitimized work on it by scientists. But isn’t it strange that the modern-day Library of Alexandria came from outside academia?

There’s a puzzle here. Scientists helped create the internet and the world wide web. They’ve taken enthusiastically to online tools such as email, and pioneered striking projects such as the Polymath Project and Galaxy Zoo. Why is it that they’ve only reluctantly adopted tools such as GenBank and Wikipedia? The reason is that, despite their radical appearance, the Polymath Project, Galaxy Zoo, and similar undertakings have an inherent underlying conservatism: they’re ultimately projects in service of the conventional goal of writing scientific papers. That conservatism helps them attract contributors who are willing to use unconventional means such as blogs to more effectively achieve a conventional end (writing a scientific paper). But when the goal isn’t simply to produce a scientific paper—as with GenBank, Wikipedia, and many other tools—there’s no direct motivation for scientists to contribute. And that’s a problem, because some of the best ideas for improving the way scientists work involve a break away from the scientific paper as the ultimate goal of scientific research. There are opportunities being missed that dwarf GenBank and Wikipedia in their potential impact. In this book, we’ll delve into the history and culture of science, and see how this situation arose, in which scientists are often reluctant to share their ideas and data in ways that speed up the advancement of science. The good news is that we’ll find leverage points where small changes today will lead to a future where scientists do take full advantage of online tools, greatly increasing our capacity for scientific discovery.

Revolutions are sometimes marked by a single, spectacular event: the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution, or the signing of the US Declaration of Independence. But often the most important revolutions aren’t announced with the blare of trumpets. They occur quietly, too slowly to make the news but fast enough that if you aren’t alert, the revolution is over before you’re aware it’s happening. The change described in this book is like this. It’s not a single event, nor is it a change that’s happening quickly. It’s a slow revolution that has quietly been gathering steam for years. Indeed, it’s a change that many scientists have missed or underestimated, being so focused on their own specialty that they don’t appreciate just how broad-ranging the impact of the new online tools is. They’re like surfers at the beach who are so intent on watching the waves crash and recede that they’re missing the rise of the tide. But you shouldn’t let the slow, quiet nature of the current changes in how science is done fool you. We are in the midst of a great change in how knowledge is constructed. Imagine you were alive in the seventeenth century, at the dawn of modern science. Most people alive at that time had