A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters
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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

BioMEMS: Forging New Collaborations Between Biologists and Engineers
Published on: November 1, 2007
1Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. hoffmann@wikigenes.org
Abstract:
WikiGenes is the first wiki system to combine the collaborative and largely altruistic possibilities of wikis with explicit authorship. In view of the extraordinary success of Wikipedia there remains no doubt about the potential of collaborative publishing, yet its adoption in science has been limited. Here I discuss a dynamic collaborative knowledge base for the life sciences that provides authors with due credit and that can evolve via continual revision and traditional peer review into a rigorous scientific tool.
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