I’ve been pretty busy recently – between work (aaarrggghhh) and failed personal projects (boohoo) so I am going to forgive myself for missing the launch of Mosaic (though not sure I can be excused by missing so much of the preamble.)

Mosaic is a really interesting experiment, an appropriate term given the focus of its content, in long form science journalism from Wellcome Trust.

Now clearly having the richest charity in the UK (3rd in the world!) in their corner allows the team behind Mosaic to make some bold choices as regards their publishing model and they really have!

The site has full-time editorial and writing staff (in fact I know two of them) and clearly a decent commissioning budget not to mention a very attractive, Medium-esque responsive website but it releases all of its content as CC-BY – just about the most permissive licence possible. Allowing anyone to reuse and republish their work – all in the name of increasing public understanding of science.

They have also been impressively open about their thinking and processes all along the way on their blog. Anyone who knows me will understand how much I appreciate this method of thinking in the open and the team have really done a great job with it.

This is another example of how the ‘web of words’ is really going through a renaissance I think as people are really starting to explore the possibilities of digital first publishing.

I can only wish everyone involved the best of luck with this genuinely exciting project.