Re: Publication of scientific research

" 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?"

funny, I just received a PDF that was annotated with adobe acrobat on
a windows computer. it had, according to the author, lots of
annotations. in my mac, I cant see any annotation, lost? maybe, I dont
know and I dont have time to play with the tools.

The PDF has advantages as well as disadvantages. in a time where
content is king the PDF locks up the content. making use of it is not
straight forward. for the type of publication you are talking about,
scholarly communication, one for which content should be human
readable AND machine procesable AND open for purposes we may not be
aware of (text mining for instance) the PDF may have more
disadvantages than advantages.

As I said in my previous email.  We faced a similar situation at
Sepublica 2013. our take on the issue was simply to accept the
submission for as long as it was as machine procesable as human
readable.

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> wrote:
> On 04/24/2013 05:54 PM, Carsten Keßler wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> To be honest, it is shocking to read that on this mailing list!
>
> It doesn't sound like you are convinced of this Web thing, when you say that
> the desktop PDF thing is less of a risk to publish and access information.
>
> We already have a great mechanism in place that forever changed the world,
> thanks to TimBL and everyone that contributed to the Web architecture. Still
> need to be convinced of the application that you use everyday?
>
> Stop looking for some magical new technology, because we already have a
> whole suit of them that's native to the Web.
>
> -Sarven
>



-- 
Alexander Garcia
http://www.alexandergarcia.name/
http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/75943.html
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgarciac

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2013 17:25:42 UTC