scientific publishing process (was Re: Cost and access)

In my opinion PDF is currently the clear winner over HTML in both the ability 
to produce readable documents and the ability to display readable documents in 
the way that the author wants them to display.  In the past I have tried 
various means to produce good-looking HTML and I've always gone back to a 
setup that produces PDF.  If a document is available in both HTML and PDF I 
almost always choose to view it in PDF.  This is the case even though I have 
particular preferences in how I view documents.

If someone wants to change the format of conference submissions, then they are 
going to have to cater to the preferences of authors, like me, and reviewers, 
like me.  If someone wants to change the format of conference papers, then 
they are going to have to cater to the preferences of authors, like me, 
attendees, like me, and readers, like me.

I'm all for *better* methods for preparing, submitting, reviewing, and 
publishing conference (and journal) papers.  So go ahead, create one.  But 
just saying that HTML is better than PDF in some dimension, even if it were 
true, doesn't mean that HTML is better than PDF for this purpose.

So I would say that the semantic web community is saying that there are better 
formats and tools for creating, reviewing, and publishing scientific papers 
than HTML and tools that create and view HTML.  If there weren't these better 
ways then an HTML-based solution might be tenable, but why use a worse 
solution when a better one is available?

peter





On 10/03/2014 08:02 AM, Phillip Lord wrote:
[...]
>
> As it stands, the only statement that the semantic web community are
> making is that web formats are too poor for scientific usage.
[...]
>
> Phil
>

Received on Friday, 3 October 2014 15:51:24 UTC