Does Open Scientific Communication Increase the Quality of Knowledge?

It was a pleasure to read the rich, sometimes evenbreathtaking target article by Brian A. Nosek and YoavBar-Anan (this issue) on a utopia of open scientificcommunication.Theauthorsstartfromthepremisethatthe purpose of public science is knowledge accumula-tion, and propose a sequence of six steps that wouldincreasingly take us away from the current model ofscientificcommunicationwithitsmixtureofpublicandprivate communication channels to a utopia of rapid,open, and extensive communication. The sequence ofthe steps makes sense, but does each step serve thepurpose of public science?Inmyviewthemosturgentproblemsoftoday’spsy-chologicalsciencearenotslowspeedofdissemination,nontransparent decision processes, or restricted com-munication options. Instead, psychological researchaccumulates a vast body of bits and pieces of knowl-edge that are produced by scientists, institutions, andjournal editors that increasingly strive to maximize im-pact instead of quality by focusing on jazzy “uniquecontributions” instead of contributing to a common cu-mulative progressbasedonrock-solidfindings.Conse-quentlythedisseminatedknowledgeistoalargedegreenonreplicable and lacks serious theoretical foundationand integration.Therefore let’s look at the proposed sequence fromthe somewhat different perspective that the purposeof public science is the accumulation of