Modern science is a main driver of technological innovation. The efficiency of the scientific system is of key importance to ensure the competitiveness of a nation or region. However, the scientific system that we use today was devised centuries ago and is inadequate for our current ICT-based society: the peer review system encourages conservatism, journal publications are monolithic and slow, data is often not available to other scientists, and the independent validation of results is limited. The resulting scientific process is hence slow and sloppy. Building on the Innovation Accelerator paper by Helbing and Balietti, this paper takes the initial global vision and reviews the theoretical and technological building blocks that can be used for implementing an innovation (in first place: science) accelerator platform driven by re-imagining the science system.

Frank van Harmelen, George Kampis, Katy Borner, Peter van den Besselaar, Erik Schultes, Carole Goble, Paul Groth, Barend Mons, Stuart Anderson, Stefan Decker, Conor Hayes, Thierry Buecheler, Dirk Helbing

Full publication: The European Physical Journal Special Topics, November 2012, Volume 214, Issue 1, Pages 183-214