I have seen the paradigm shift, and it is us

tend to get nervous when i hear talk of paradigm shifts. The term itself has been debased through inaccurate popular use—even turning into a joke on The Simpsons—but its original role in Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1] is worth revisiting as we examine the idea of a Fourth Paradigm and its impact on scholarly communication [2]. Kuhn's model describes a world of science in which a set of ideas becomes dominant and entrenched, creating a worldview (the infamous " paradigm ") that itself gains strength and power. This set of ideas becomes powerful because it represents a plausible explanation for observed phenomena. Thus we get the luminiferous aether, the miasma theory of infectious disease, and the idea that the sun revolves around the Earth. The set of ideas, the worldview, the paradigm, gains strength through incrementalism. Each individual scientist tends to work in a manner that adds, bit by bit, to the paradigm. The individual who can make a big addition to the worldview gains authority, research contracts, awards and prizes, and seats on boards of directors. All involved gain an investment in the set of ideas that goes beyond the ideas themselves. Industries and governments (and the people who work in them) build businesses and policies that depend on the worldview. This adds a layer of defense—an immune system of sorts—that protects the worldview against attack.