The prospect of publishing books and articles on wikis has got me thinking about the future of scholarly research in a world in which publications need never be completed.

Of course, I don't know for sure if this will happen, but this eventuality also doesn't seem out of the question. With the growth in born-digital publishing (both informal and formal), and the ease of editing digital documents, why should constraints be placed on the end point of a publication?

This concept seems particularly compelling in the scholarly world. Scholarship never ends. There is never a last word, even about established facts. What we've had up till now in published works are static snapshots. Sure, there may be follow-up articles, second editions and corrections, but each work stands alone as a completed product. I find myself wondering if researchers - and writers - will continue to be content with snapshots when the technical barriers to revision are so low and readers' comfort level with edited online works is growing.

It occurs to me that we expect more of Web sites in terms of staying current, and staying current quickly, than we do of peer-reviewed or edited scholarly publications. Can this scenario last?

Imagine, for example, the end of print scholarly journals, replaced by open-ended online wiki articles. This could be a boon to scholarship, but also might present researchers with a myriad of complications. Imagine trying to navigate a wiki article written and then revised by multiple authors across time. Imagine trying to pin down the evolution of findings, concepts, insights and opinions. Would earlier writings become less respected if their updates were so easily available? How would you construct a citation? When would your own article that referenced this citation be finished?

Meanwhile, we librarians would have a challenge on our hands when helping students and faculty with their research when they encounter such publications. We would surely be valuable to our users if we became experts in this publishing model.

In this forcasted scenario, a writer or group of writers might choose to bring a publication to a close. Eventually exhaustion or disinterest could set in, or the writers will have gone on to other things. The Wikibooks project specifies a completion point for its textbooks based on certain criteria, at which point the books become published in PDF.

I know I'm only scratching the surface here. I can imagine all sorts of resistance to, and fears about, the concept of open-ended scholarly publishing, and I'm not unsympathetic. But I'm also intrigued.