Knowledge grows like species evolve. Ideas are combined to form new knowledge in a process we can call  bisociation , such that new knowledge is really just a combination of existing ideas.

Focusing solely on the incentive structures misses the elephant in the room: that we are still relying on 17th Century technology to capture and share knowledge.

Fully open, easily accessible data, together with open debate and version control, enables much greater scrutiny over results, which should lead to more accurate knowledge.

the problem is with the interface of scientific literature. We cannot expect the wider population to be scientifically literate if they are not given the capability of understanding the artifacts we use to communicate about new scientific developments.

public goods are not public goods if the public cannot understand them

In many cases, the reader might be able to provide valuable insight that was inaccessible to the author, simply because they have had a different set of experiences. They may be able to unlock something important by applying their own knowledge in the context of the paper. Despite being highly valuable, this kind of insight isn't recorded anywhere,... See more

A major development in this trajectory, not limited to scientific journals alone, was the invention of graphical displays of information...Graphical displays of information are the foundation of every discipline concerned with quantitative information, because they make information human readable.

Scientific literature is the meeting place between people and ideas at the frontiers of human knowledge. It acts as the interface for science, enabling interaction between people and the shared record of knowledge.

Words are a lossy medium for describing rich, multidimensional ideas.