SpotOn London 2012: Kamila Markram's Keynote on "Publishing Science in the Internet Age"

Science is undergoing a radical and disruptive transformation in the Internet age. This transformation began with the spontaneous formation of the Internet – the global library of knowledge, data, ideas and opinions. Today’s generation of cyber-scientists not only performs experiments in labs, but also uses the Internet to do research, collaborate and share work. The immense potential offered by this combination of connected scientists, data, knowledge, and ideas have sparked a new industry of services – an infinite permutation of search methods, knowledge creation and sharing. These trends pose enormous challenges to publishers in the digital age: Open Access is inevitable because information wants to be free; peer-review will revert from an act of power back to its altruistic roots of transparency and democracy; networking will become the new fabric of science because infinite collaborations offer infinite potentials. And services will blossom as the catalyst for it all. Frontiers is the first publisher that has embraced these trends and built a completely new IT platform to serve scientists in the Internet age – evolving Open Access, solving peer-review and enabling scientific networking.