Since the emergence of the web 15 years ago, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become indispensable for most researchers. Email and online access to public or restricted databases have become essential tools, allowing academics to keep in touch with their peers and up to date with the latest developments. Widely dispersed research groups can now easily coordinate their work online by means of Skype conference calls.

Within some sections of the academic community there is considerable hesitation to adopt web 2.0 applications for social networking through blogs, wikis, twitter and sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Granted, some academics, including a few professors, now write personal blogs, but in general, researchers seem reluctant to enter the realm of social networks, and to start using web 2.0 tools for producing collaborative reports, sharing work in progress or publishing their results.

There are perhaps three major obstacles. First, the formal system of peer review to guarantee the quality of research is at odds with the informal and much more open ways of communicating via online social networks. The second obstacle is the ‘publish or perish’ rule – researchers must publish in peer-reviewed subscription journals in order to further their academic careers. This does not fit well with philosophy behind social networking that all knowledge should be freely available. Finally, the ambition of all researchers to publish their findings before anyone else, and to secure potentially profitable intellectual property rights, discourages them from sharing work in progress on platforms that are open to all.

In this special report, Janelle Ward examines two web 2.0 applications, blogs and wikis, that are slowly gaining acceptance among academics. The Broker wishes to open a discussion on the processes of generating and publishing knowledge in the web 2.0 era. In particular, The Broker will address whether the principles and applications of web 2.0 could contribute to greater inclusion and higher-quality research or represent a distraction that may dilute the quality of research, and whether a divide is in the making between researchers of the web 2.0 generation and the academic establishment.