Re: scientific publishing process (was Re: Cost and access)

On 2014-10-06 06:59, Ivan Herman wrote:
 > Of course, I could expect a Web technology related crows to use HTML 
source editing directly but the experience by Daniel and myself with the 
World Wide Web conference(!) is that people do not want to do that. 
(Researchers in, say, Web Search have proven to be unable or unwilling 
to edit HTML source. It was a real surprise...). Ie, the authoring tool 
offers are still limited.

Can you please elaborate on that? When was that and what tools were 
available or used? Do you have any documentation on the landscape from 
that time that we can use or learn from?

My understanding is that, you've experienced some issues about a decade 
ago and your reasoning is clouded by that. Do you think that it would be 
fair to revisit the situation based on today's landscape and see how it 
will play out?

 From my perspective, we should have a bit more faith in the SW 
community because then we might actually strive to deliver, as opposed 
to walking away from the problem.

Like I said in my previous emails, (which I'm sure you've read), the 
current workshops on SW/LD research publishing did not deliver. Why do 
you have so much faith for waiting out and hope that they will deliver? 
They might, and I hope they do. But, I'm not putting all my chips on 
that option alone. I would rather see grass-roots efforts in parallel 
e.g., http://csarven.ca/call-for-linked-research

What's the number of human hours on CfP on "Linked Science" + "Semantic 
Publishing" so far? How was the delivery of machine and human-friendly 
research changed or evolved? What's visible or countable? On that front, 
what can we do right now that wasn't possible 5-10 years ago?

In the meantime, if the conferences, workshops can get back on track and 
motivate people (at least), we would not only see more value drawn out 
of the SW research, but also growing funding opportunities, and faster 
progress across the field.

I am disappointed by the fact that instead of addressing the core issue 
"can the conferences allow or encourage the Web stack?" we are 
discussing distractions e.g., perfection in authoring tools. Every user 
has their own preferences i.e., some will code, some will use tool X. 
What you are suggesting is that, lets wait it out because the 
developments may reveal the perfect authorship tooling. If that was ever 
the case, we'd see it in the general "market", not something that might 
one day emerge out of SW/LD workshops.

I will bet that if the requirements evolve towards Webby submissions, 
within 3-5 years time, we'd see a notable change in how we collect, 
document and mine scientific research in SW. This is not just being 
"hopeful". I believe that if all of the newcomers into the (academic) 
research scene start from HTML (and friends) instead of LaTeX/Word (and 
friends), we wouldn't be having this discussion. If the newcomes are 
told to deal with LaTeX/Word (regardless of hand coding or using a 
WYSIWYG editor) today, they are going to do exactly that. That basically 
pushes the date further for complete switch over to Webby tools because 
majority of those researchers would have to be flushed out of the 
system, before the next wave of Webby users can have their chance.

Even if we have all of the perfect or appropriate tooling (which I think 
is the wrong thing to aim for) right now, it will still take a few years 
to flush out or have the current LaTeX/Word users to evolve. I would 
rather see the smallest change happen right now than nothing at all.

*AGAIN*, technology is not the problem. #DIY

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i