This article has been published in the Knowlative Blog on the 18th of July, 2018. If you miss the first two parts, you can find them here: Part 1: What is really “Copyright” anyway? and Part 2: How do you protect an idea?.
We are very well aware of the difficulty in showing the professionals in our field that join Knowlative a different way to see the copyright law and data protection. We want to show that a different system is feasible in our world, and that applying it can be beneficial for everyone involved. As a first step, here we would like to illustrate the reasons to align the way we present the knowledge inside the platform to the scientific system of attribution, while in the meantime trying to solve some of the issues in the actual scientific world.
If we want to be accepted as a mainstream, we need to show that integrated medicine works, so we must be able to do research in a scientific way. Choosing not to comply with this method renders us unable to communicate with the western world and to refuse many advantages it brings with it. The Scientific Method has shown to be the most reliable method for many different reasons: results, reproducibility, understanding of the true mechanisms that underlie an effect, knowledge diffusion, rightful attribution of discoveries and many others.
Therefore, how does Knowlative applies the Scientific method to its knowledge structure?
As a starting point, it is useful to analyse some of the features of a scientific paper; the ones that Knowlative chose to give value into the platform. If you like to have a full analysis of a scientific paper, please refer to: evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/teach/journal/dissectingapaper.php, where the Berkeley University describes exhaustively all features of a scientific publication.
The first thing you notice in a scientific paper (after the title) is the author. Knowlative assigns a full Unit of Knowledge (U-oK) to the author in which information about his/her history and activity can be found. This U-oK can be easily linked to any technique that the author develops through time, clearly attributing the authorship of that specific technique/protocol/research. In time anyone can add information to any Unit of Knowledge in the system, but the paternity of that specific U-oK is going to be attributed (also economically) through this linking system. Therefore if someone is going to insert new knowledge, he has the ability to link it to its rightful author. If someone else disagree to the attribution, a “signal an abuse” button will help him report the situation to us so that we can intervene.
The second fundamental aspect of our platform is the reference system. After attributing a specific technique to the author, anyone can add a reference to a publication (book, article, leaflet…) in which that technique is included or from which that technique has taken inspiration or material. This allows everyone to track the publications made in a specific field and to have an index of the major publications made in the kinesiology world. Quotes are also allowed in the system, granted that a correct reference is required. (Similarly, images and figures are allowed, granted that the person that inserts them is the owner of the rights to publish them.)
The reference system is a fundamental way to understand the way a technique is made, as well as to better learn about the substrate in which the technique is rooted. The references can be a handy way to learn about an area of research and to develop more in that area. To us it is also a clean and honest way to credit the sources of an idea, and to show the community that what you created is sound and solid.
Both the author U-oK and the reference section allow us to further develop the platform. In time we want any author that has a personal page in the system to insert his activities and to promote his courses and seminars, and to publish the links where a specific paper or book can be found and bought. We want the knowledge to spread and we want everyone to be able to access it easily!
Another important aspect of the actual scientific system is the Peer Review. As quoted from wikipedia: “The peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance and provide credibility.” Knowlative is a community of peers and we are going to take advantage of this characteristic through a series of methods that are going to give value to the people that help us develop the platform further.
But before exploring these methods further, we need to look at the drawbacks of applying the scientific system as it is: in practice there are not only advantages in it, but also issues and limits. Let’s have a look at these aspects and how Knowlative can solve them.
Part 4: Avoiding “Groupthink”
