Matteo Cantiello edited Main.tex  about 8 years ago

Commit id: 2fdd07c92d8d963705cb78d65883fc71cb2815ca

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So apparently not much has happened in 100 years in the field of scientific writing and publication, although plenty has happened in science itself. The complexity of the LIGO experiment is astounding, as well as the details of what scientists needed to do to reach this milestone. Measuring a change in length \href{https://www.authorea.com/101461}{equivalent to 1/1000 the diameter of a proton} is not an easy endeavor.   And yet the sheer technological and intellectual progress that we witnessed in the last century, with the rise of the internet and large scale computing, is not reflected in the methods we use to write up our science. Little has changed since the time of Einstein. Actually not much has changed since the time of Galileo either! Who was \href{https://www.authorea.com/6316}{the first to publish} a "scientific paper" in 1610. That's 400+ years of scientific investigation.  The reason is that the scientific paper represents the de-facto currency of academia, and so it's very stiff to change.   Scholars need to publish in journals to get tenure, and which makes  publishersare  the "banks" of the academic world..  But the paper of the future should encapsulate all the exciting technological progress we have made. It should be interactive, multilayered and contain all the data and code required for the science described to be carefully reproduced. The LIGO group, together with some Open Science advocates, prepared and shared an \href{http://app.mybinder.org/3508569826 }{amazing interactive document} where everyone can play with the real data and pipeline used by the scientists to reach their final conclusions. However, this was not part of the original publication, the reason being that the format of the published article does not allow for such integration.  Authorea is born as the answer to this (and other) problems: It lives in the cloud and is meant to allow large collaborations to write their science and easily integrate data, code and all that is needed to reproduce (and discuss) results. Authorea can allow the long-awaited leap that will move the scientific paper in the 21st century. \href{https://www.authorea.com/8762}{The paper of the future }.