Towards an Open/Web 2.0 Scientific Publishing Industry? Preliminary Findings and Open Issues*

The collaborative and open way of generating, organizing, and managing knowledge has been growingly seen as an essential activity to foster innovation, economic growth and social development. Interestingly enough, while this model is being applied in several social as well as business sectors, the scientific publishing industry – which is devoted to the production, evaluation and diffusion of scientific knowledge – does not seem to have been much affected by this collaborative revolution. The goal of this paper is that of exploring the current configuration of the scientific publishing industry in order to understand whether and to what extent innovative technologies and open paradigms might change its current configuration. We outline (a) the certification abilities of publishers and (b) the need for reputation of authors as two " soft " drivers of the market that need to be taken into consideration if we want to estimate the impact of the collaborative revolution within the scientific community and, ultimately, in the innovative practices and business models of the scientific publishing industry.