Growing access to information and data is perhaps the most persistent theme in modern innovation. In the past 25 years, global access to knowledge and information has radically expanded. Spurred by the invention of the internet and the web, people across the globe are able to publish and consume information in a borderless and unbounded manner. Hypertext transfer protocols continuously stream unimaginable volumes of information between continents, at near the speed of light.
But science lags far behind other information ecosystems. Unfortunately, science has not benefited from the internet-enabled innovation of the past 25 years as greatly as other information ecosystems. Vast troves of research remain shielded from the public, largely as a consequence of archaic and exploitative publication models. Research also remains hard to publish without the approval of sanctioned gatekeepers.
The "publishing problem" is threefold, spanning a complex cultural, legal, and technological landscape. Whether because of a dearth of licensing options for openly published research, or inadequate technology for decentralized publishing, scientific publishing is heavily centralized institution. Though the publishing problem is broad and hard to precisely define, one institution can be seen as the source: the scientific journal.
Scientific journals have a tight monopoly over the means of research publication. Entire fields of science are often dominated by a handful of journals, and information transfer within the broader scientific ecosystem rarely occurs outside of "high-impact journals", which are highly competitive and expensive to publish in. Because of their dominant position, journals are able to extract payments from researchers and readers, in a Kafkaesque (and often taxpayer-funded) arrangement.
By decentralizing publishing technology and providing a legal model for decentralized publishing, the SciPub Foundation hopes to change this.