HiLight

Online registry of ideas

Foreword

It has been much spoken about the information boom and the crisis of traditional publishing in the end of the XX century. The exponential growth of information available on any subject has been indicated, as well as the impossibility for a professional to cope even with the most recent publications in a narrow field. Another side of it might be called a "moral crisis": the whole of the human knowledge and experience is disintegrated into a tremendous number of highly specialized branches, and the promoters of each branch (the "specialists") form a kind of caste preventing any intervention from outside; as a result, people can hardly understand each other - and even don't try to.

However, the crisis may just seem too heavy, and it might be overcome by mere reorganization of human communications. This is much like filtering off the noise from a radio signal. Thus, an average scientific paper contains less than 5% of really valuable information, the rest of the text being the guise needed to give the paper a "scientific" look and to convince the reviewers that there is nothing really new in it, save a very timid extension of the knowledge already gained. Scientific literature is most repetitive and replete with unnecessary references and quotes, fearing to offend anybody. This holds for both natural sciences (including physics and mathematics) and humanities.

So, if one could say directly what one wants to, without side reverences, self-advertising or disguise, the total volume of information communicated would be drastically diminished. The elimination of professional barriers would make the thoughts and ideas much more communicable and more suited for further development and implementation. Finally, the condensed style of communication would make it possible to centralize publishing, thus avoiding the necessity to browse numerous scholarly journals for an idea.

The HiLight project is an alternative to the traditional ways of publishing the results of research in any field, promoting free, honest and unprejudiced interdisciplinary communication between people of quite different education and origin. This is the first attempt to cultivate a new style of communication which would make people forget about information boom and cultural crisis. Hopefully, the example of HiLight will be followed by the other publishers, and the ideas built in it will be further refined and brought to life.

HiLight's homepage

Goals and scope

General description

Guidelines for contributors

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