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

This is an incredibly rich and interestingly conversation. I think there
are two separate themes:
1. What is required and/or asked-for by the conference organizers...
a. ...that is needed for the review process
b. ...that is needed to implement value-added services for the conference
c. ...that contributes to the body of work

2. What is required and/or asked for by the publisher?

All of (1) is about the "meat" of the contributions, including establishing
a long-term legacy. (2) is about (presumably) prestigious output.

What added services could esp. Easychair provide that would go beyond 1.a.
and contribute to 1.b. and 1.c., etc.? Are there any Easychair committers
watching this thread? ;)

John

On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
wrote:

>  On 10/6/14 10:25 AM, Paul Houle wrote:
>
> Frankly I don't see the reason for the hate on PDF files.
>
>  I do a lot of reading on a tablet these days because I can take it to
> the gym or on a walk or in the car.  Network reliability is not universal
> when I leave the house (even if I had a $10 a GB LTE plan) so downloaded
> PDFs are my document format of choice.
>
>  There might be a lot of hypothetical problems with PDFs,  and I am sure
> there is a better way to view files on a small screen,  but practically I
> have no trouble reading papers from arXiv.org,  books from oreilly.com,
>  be these produced by a TeX-derived or Word-derived toolchains or a
> toolchain that involves a real page layout tool for that matter.
>
>
> Paul,
>
> As I see it, the issue here is more to do with PDF being the only option,
> rather than no PDFs at all. Put differently, we are not using our "horses
> for course" technology (the Web that emerges from AWWW exploitation) to
> produce "horses for course" conference artifacts. Instead, we continue to
> impose (overtly or covertly) specific options that are contradictory, and
> of diminishing value.
>
> Conferences (associated with themes like Semantic Web and Linked Open
> Data) should accept submissions that provide open access to relevant
> research data. In a sense, imagine if PDFs where submitted without
> bibliographic references. Basically, that's what happening here with
> research data circa. 2014, where we have a functioning Web of Linked (Open)
> Data, which is based on AWWW.
>
> Loosely coupling the print-friendly documents (PDFs, Latex etc.),
> http-browser friendly documents (HTML), and actual raw data references
> (which take the form of 5-Star Linked Open Data ) is a practical staring
> point. Adding experiment workflow (which is also becoming the norm in the
> bio informatics realm) is a nice bonus, as already demonstrated by examples
> provided by Hugh Glaser (see: this weekend's thread).
>
> Kingsley
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Mark Diggory <mdiggory@atmire.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 2:39 PM, Mark Diggory <mdiggory@atmire.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello Community,
>>>
>>>  On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Luca Matteis <lmatteis@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> wrote:
>>>> > The real problem is still the missing tooling. Authors, even if
>>>> technically savy like this community, want to do what they set up to do:
>>>> write their papers as quickly as possible. They do not want to spend their
>>>> time going through some esoteric CSS massaging, for example. Let us face
>>>> it: we are not yet there. The tools for authoring are still very poor.
>>>>
>>>> But are they still very poor? I mean, I think there are more tools for
>>>> rendering HTML than there are for rendering Latex. In fact there are
>>>> probably more tools for rendering HTML than anything else out there,
>>>> because HTML is used more than anything else. Because HTML powers the
>>>> Web!
>>>
>>>
>>>> You can write in Word, and export in HTML. You can write in Markdown
>>>> and export in HTML. You can probably write in Latex and export in HTML
>>>> as well :)
>>>
>>>
>>>> The tools are not the problem. The problem to me is the printing
>>>> afterwords. Conferences/workshops need to print the publications.
>>>> Printing consistent Latex/PDF templates is a lot easier than printing
>>>> inconsistent (layout wise) HTML pages.
>>>>
>>>
>>>   There are tools, for example, theres already a bit of work to provide
>>> a plugin for semantic markup in Microsoft Word (
>>> https://ucsdbiolit.codeplex.com/) and similar efforts on the Latex side
>>> (https://trac.kwarc.info/sTeX/)
>>>
>>>  But, this is not a question of technology available to authors, but of
>>> requirements defined by publishers. If authors are too busy for this
>>> effort, then publishers facilitate that added value when it is in their
>>> best interest.
>>>
>>> For example, PLoS has a published format guidelines using Work and Latex
>>> (http://www.plosone.org/static/guidelines), a workflow for semantically
>>> structuring their resulting output and their final output is well
>>> structured and available in XML based on a known standard (
>>> http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd), PDF and
>>> the published HTML on their website (
>>> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0011233
>>> ).
>>>
>>>  This results In semantically meaningful XML that is transformed to HTML
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObjectAttachment.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0011233&representation=XML
>>>
>>>  Clearly the publication process can support solutions and when its in
>>> the best interest of the publisher. They will adopt and drive their own
>>> markup processes to meet external demand.
>>>
>>>  Providing tools that both the publisher and the author may use
>>> independently could simplify such an effort, but is not a main driver in
>>> achieving that final result you see in PLoS. This is especially the case
>>> given that both file formats and efforts to produce the "ideal solution"
>>> are inherently localized, competitive and diverse, not collaborative in
>>> nature. For PLoS, the solution that is currently successful is the one that
>>> worked to solve todays immediate local need with todays tools, not the one
>>> that was perfectly designed to meet all tomorrows hypothetical requirements.
>>>
>>>  Cheers,
>>> Mark Diggory
>>>
>>>  p.s. Finally, on the reference of moving repositories such as EPrints
>>> and DSpace towards supporting semantic markup of their contents. Being
>>> somewhat of a participant in LoD on the DSpace side, I note that these
>>> efforts are inherently just "Repository Centric", describing the the
>>> structure of the repository (IE collections of files), not the semantic
>>> structure contained within those files (ideas, citations, formulas, data
>>> tables, figures). In both cases, these capabilities are in their infancy
>>> and without any strict format and content driven publication workflow, and
>>> lacking any rendering other than to offer the file for download, they
>>> ultimately suffer from the same need for a common Semantic Document format
>>> that can be leveraged for rendering, referencing and indexing.
>>>
>>>
>>>  --
>>>    [image: @mire Inc.]
>>>  *Mark Diggory*
>>> *2888 Loker Avenue East, Suite 315, Carlsbad, CA. 92010*
>>> *Esperantolaan 4, Heverlee 3001, Belgium*
>>> http://www.atmire.com
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>>    [image: @mire Inc.]
>>  *Mark Diggory*
>> *2888 Loker Avenue East, Suite 315, Carlsbad, CA. 92010*
>> *Esperantolaan 4, Heverlee 3001, Belgium*
>> http://www.atmire.com
>>
>>
>
>
>  --
> Paul Houle
> Expert on Freebase, DBpedia, Hadoop and RDF
> (607) 539 6254    paul.houle on Skype   ontology2@gmail.com
> http://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/lookup
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen	
> Founder & CEO
> OpenLink Software
> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
> Personal Weblog 1: http://kidehen.blogspot.com
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>
>


-- 
John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, Web Science Research Center
Tetherless World Constellation (RPI)
<http://tw.rpi.edu> <olyerickson@gmail.com>
Twitter & Skype: olyerickson