Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

On 02/21/2018 11:54 PM, Ruben Verborgh wrote:
>> What benefits are there for me in this?
> Having your work more openly available,
> faster feedback by a much broader audience,
> having more means to communicate and visualize research.

How does switching away from PDF get all this?
>
> While the effort to write an article remains the same.
>
>> Does the new model make it easier for
>> me as an author?
> The hard thing of doing research can't be writing the text, right?
> It's not harder than writing LaTeX.

For me to  switch the new model has to be easier to author content, or make up
for it in other ways.  My experience is that writing publications with
significant mathematical or logical content in systems that permit varying
display characteristics is more difficult than in systems that fix more of the
display characteristics, at least with the tools that I have used.
>> As a reviewer?
> The job of a reviewer doesn't change.

Again, it's not enough to just keep things the same.  There have to be
benefits to switching.

>
> If combined with open reviews,
> more visibility and reward become possible,
> plus non-solicited reviewers can also come in.

Open reviewing is an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced that there are
any benefits that come from it.  In any case, PDF can be used in open reviewing.
>
>> As a reader?
> No paywalls.
> A more flexible format to read on different devices,
> with new interaction and discussion possibilities.

There are three different kinds of benefits claimed here, coming from three
different aspects of publication.  The three are almost entirely independent.

Sometime in the (near?) future the benefits may be sufficient to justify
switching away from PDF, but I don't see that there is much of a gain
currently.   There are benefits to having a single-file fixed-format
publication vehicle like PDF that I don't want to give up. 

>
> Best,
>
> Ruben


peter

Received on Thursday, 22 February 2018 09:12:28 UTC