With the initial success of Web 2.0, the essence of this set of useful technology tools have penetrated the hard-shell of scientific collaboration and publishing process. The ubiquitous things like tags, social networks, and blogs have created a new dimension to the approach of scientific publishing. Popularly called Science 2.0, the new approach facilitates publishing raw results of research and a broader platform for collaborative research.

On one hand, a section of the scientific community hails this phenomenon as a natural progression whereas others treat this as a major source of controversies about retention of patent and intellectual copyrights. There have been quite a few websites that have started using this approach whereas major print journals have started adding Web 2.0 tools to their websites. Anyway, Science 2.0 has already been here.

This new approach revolves round the principle of open access, and is perceived as more productive. Going by arguments of numerous open discussions and continual refinements by the scientific community through the last several centuries, this approach, crowdsourcing, reaffirms our unchanged direction of accumulating scientific knowledge.

The obvious pitfall in this approach is the possibility of premature exposure of research ideas and findings, thereby, resulting in breach in intellectual property rights if rival researchers exploit the situation. This may also result in hard-feeling among the genuine researchers and may jeopardise the basic safety and genuine assessment of patents.