Re: Publication of scientific research (was: CfP: 3rd International Workshop on Linked Science 2013 (LISC2013))

We had this discussion among the Linked Science workshop organizers
several times. I'm with Paul, I think that a human-readable
description is central to the dissemination of research results (and
will probably remain for the foreseeable future). I'm not saying that
PDF is the best way to do this, especially when it comes to pointing
to or even integrating additional resources, but it is certainly the
most widely accepted one. This also leads directly to the question how
to make sure that we produce is still readable in 10, 20, or even 50
years? IMO, there's no big risk if you go with PDF, but for other,
less main-stream formats – who knows?

If the semantic web community as a whole comes up with a better way of
publishing results that also ensures archiving and long-term
accessibility, plus better integration with non-textual resources, I'm
all for it. In fact, the Linked Science workshop would be a good venue
to present and discuss ideas in this direction.

Cheers,
Carsten

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Andrea Splendiani
<andrea.splendiani@iscb.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> let me drop in this discussion, as I also have experience in organizing conferences and the like.
>
> There two main issues in moving beyond pdf.
>
> One, probably minor, is that there are larger constraints. Some people need their work to be somewhere "understood" by their organization. This is a bit less relevant for conferences than for journals, but still an issue.
>
> The other is that some bit of a research paper can lend to formalization. But there is a lot of variability.
> In some case you are closer to what web languages can represent. E.g.: a finding in RDF, some algorithm shown in JavaScript,...
> But what is somebody is publishing a description of an information systems ?
> It may get so far from a standard way to talk about think that you won't gain much with a structured representation.
>
> pdf + other technologies, when it applies, could be a good idea, though.
>
> best,
> Andrea
>
> Il giorno 24/apr/2013, alle ore 09:52, Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> ha scritto:
>
>> On 04/23/2013 11:52 PM, Paul Groth wrote:
>>> As an organizer of both this workshop and one called the Beyond the
>>> PDF force11.org/beyondthepdf2 - I'll respond.
>>>
>>> There's nothing particularly wrong with PDF as a means of
>>> encapsulating human readable information so asking for submissions
>>> this way seems suitable. (Yes there are downsides to the format and
>>> maybe we would should be more liberal in terms of formats). pdf also
>>> has facilities for embedding metadata in rdf.
>>
>> Make is so!?
>>
>> What's stopping the conference/workshop organizers from making that change? Why not the other way around?
>>
>> If the organizers request the research work to be submitted using Web native technologies e.g., (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MathML, SVG, and yes, RDF, what do you think will happen?
>>
>> Make the change and people will follow like they always do. How am I so sure about that? Because authors want to get their degrees and/or recognized in the field. So, they'll do what's necessary.
>>
>> The point is that, you have some responsibility - pardon me for saying that, but I can't resist - to ask for the works in Web friendly formats as the primary format.
>>
>> What I imagine will happen is that, in the short term, some people are going to whine about it because it is not what they are used. Boohoo; computers are hard. They want to continue writing /paragraph instead of <p> (to put it in a nutshell).
>>
>>> I would hope that the submissions to the workshop are the text around
>>> lots of links to both source code repositories and linked data
>>> sources - that's the true test
>>
>> I beg to differ. I think folks are interested in different things. I'm sure you would agree that there is a lot of value in research analysis for different parties. For example, I want to write a query to compare the claims (findings, or results) of different research that's conducted. Among many insights that one could obtain, gathering statistical data on that tells me what we are doing, how fast we are going, and where to focus next etc. How do we do that in PDF again (or from the hacked up RDF metadata within)? We have the technologies at our disposal, yet, for all intents and purposes we are going in the opposite direction and making it more difficult than necessary to do some "Linked Science" and alike.
>>
>> Paul, I'm not singling you (or other organizers) out - and like many, I respect your contributions. We have a recurring issue at hand (at least in my eyes; as I sound like an old broken record in these mailing lists) in the Semantic Web / Linked Data community. And, the hold-back is not only from conferences/workshops. Authors in this community need to take responsibility and make their contributions by eating their own dogfood (or well, the Web standards that they buy in to). Supervisors, academia, or funding bodies should be encouraging the same efforts. That's when we are all on the same page.
>>
>> If you want to make a change, make it so! You don't need anyone's permission. :)
>>
>> -Sarven
>>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2013 15:54:54 UTC