Re: Publication of scientific research

On 2013-04-25 15:42, Daniel Schwabe wrote:
> Sarven and all,
> I don't have the answers to your questions. But I find it interesting that we could at least do a survey with authors. But we would really have to at least mention some *reasonable* tools that are available, otherwise I'm afraid their positions won't change from before.
> I will discuss this within IW3C2 and see if we can include a question about this in one of the pre- or post- WWW conferences surveys.
> In  the meantime, perhaps SWSA (who promotes ISWC) might want to follow up on this idea as well.
> Cheers
> D

Hi Daniel,

If you have any follow-up information on that, would you mind sharing?

Sorry to bring this up a year and a half later, but I'm still interested.

Thanks,

-Sarven


> On Apr 25, 2013, at 10:29  - 25/04/13, Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> wrote:
>
>> On 04/24/2013 09:39 PM, Daniel Schwabe wrote:
>>> Some years ago, IW3C2, which promotes the WWW conference, and  of which I am a member, is very interested in furthering the use of Web standards, for all the reasons that have already been mentioned in this discussion, decided to ask authors to submit papers in (X)Html. After all, WWW is a *Web* conference! (This was before RDF and its associated tools were available.)
>>> The bottom line was that authors REFUSED do submit in this format, partly because of lack of tools, partly because they were just comfortable with the existing tools. There were so many that it would have simply ruined the conference if the organization simply refused these submissions.
>>> The objection was so strong that IW3C2 eventually had to change its mind, and keep it they way it was, and currently is.
>>> Clearly, for some specialized communities, certain alternative formats may be acceptable - ontologies, in the context of sepublica, make perfect sense as an acceptable submission format. But when dealing with a more general audience, I do not believe we have the power to FORCE people to adopt any single specialized format - as everything else, these things emerge from a community consensus over time, even if first spearheaded by a smaller core group.
>>> Before that happens, we need to have a very clear value proposition and, most of all, good tools for people to accept and change. Most people will not change their ways is not convinced that it's worth the additional effort - and having really good tools is a sine qua non requirement for this.
>>> On the other hand, efforts continue to at least provide metadata in RDF, which has been surprisingly harder to produce year after year without requiring hand coding and customization each time. But we will get there, I hope.
>>> Just my 2c...
>>
>> Hi Daniel, thank you for that invaluable background.
>>
>> I'll ask the community: what is the real lesson from this and how can we improve?
>>
>> What's more important: keeping the conference running or some ideals?
>>
>> Was that reaction from authors expected? Will it ever be different?
>>
>> What would have happened if IW3C2 stood at its place? What would happen if conferences take a stand - where will authors migrate?
>>
>> What would be the short and long term consequences?
>>
>> Not that I challenge this, but are we sure that it is the lack of good tools that's holding things back? What would make the authors happy? Was there a survey on this?
>>
>> -Sarven
>>
>>
>
> Daniel Schwabe                      Dept. de Informatica, PUC-Rio
> Tel:+55-21-3527 1500 r. 4356        R. M. de S. Vicente, 225
> Fax: +55-21-3527 1530               Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22453-900, Brasil
> http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~dschwabe
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