The challenge of modern academic knowledge exchange

Abstract

While over the last decade computing practitioners created new, innovative applications like online auctions, blogs, wikis, chat, social networks and social book-marking, computing academia has innovated much less. The resulting theory/practice divide in computing can be attributed to the effect on academic creativity of the myth that rigor is excellence. The use of publishing to appoint positions, promote for tenure and allocate grants supports the current "gatekeeper" academic publishing model. This is not only based on print-publishing limits that no longer apply, but also incorrect as it ignores the 'Type II" error of rejecting useful knowledge. Modern social computing suggests how to reinvent the academic knowledge exchange system (KES) to innovate and disseminate as well as discriminate. Building upon existing successful knowledge repositories like the Los Alamos archive suggests an open electronic KES that not only increases dissemination (by publishing all) but also increases discrimination (by rating all). This suggests that the Information Technology (IT) discipline should balance rigor and relevance to create knowledge growth, as do systems like Wikipedia, rather than follow the gatekeeper model, e.g. create an electronic portal open to all multi-disciplinary knowledge travelers at the nexus of technology use.