Figure 1

Information flow. Traditional flow of information (green) comes from an idea, or an empirical observation, (symbolized by a light bulb) that is developed and supported by subsequent scientific research and data (symbolized by a graph) and then submitted to a traditional peer-reviewed journal. If accepted, new ideas and hypotheses may be propagated from the published results and this process is iterated. Once published, the information is then considered knowledge, as opposed to an idea or an untested hypothesis, and would be accepted in the traditional wikis. However, insights about the data may be lost if the compiled data and research are not published in a timely manner. Even a very good idea or hypothesis may never be propagated if they are not assembled with associated data to make a publishable module required for traditional journals. TOPSAN information flow (blue) proposes to not only accept, but also encourage intellectual contributions ranging from speculation to hypotheses to extensive data collections/analyses. While a full, peer-reviewed publication remains an ultimate goal, at any given time most TOPSAN pages would represent prepublication stages. TOPSAN attempts to expand an iterative research process, typically restricted to a single research group, to a distributed, virtual collaboration.