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

On 10/6/14 11:39 AM, John Erickson wrote:
> 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

+1


Kingsley

>
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Kingsley Idehen 
> <kidehen@openlinksw.com <mailto: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 <http://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
>>     <mailto:mdiggory@atmire.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>         On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 2:39 PM, Mark Diggory
>>         <mdiggory@atmire.com <mailto:mdiggory@atmire.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             Hello Community,
>>
>>             On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Luca Matteis
>>             <lmatteis@gmail.com <mailto:lmatteis@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>                 On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Ivan Herman
>>                 <ivan@w3.org <mailto: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.
>>
>>
>>             -- 
>>             @mire Inc.
>>             	*Mark Diggory*
>>             /2888 Loker Avenue East, Suite 315, Carlsbad, CA. 92010/
>>             /Esperantolaan 4, Heverlee 3001, Belgium/
>>             http://www.atmire.com <http://www.atmire.com/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>         -- 
>>         @mire Inc.
>>         	*Mark Diggory*
>>         /2888 Loker Avenue East, Suite 315, Carlsbad, CA. 92010/
>>         /Esperantolaan 4, Heverlee 3001, Belgium/
>>         http://www.atmire.com <http://www.atmire.com/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Paul Houle
>>     Expert on Freebase, DBpedia, Hadoop and RDF
>>     (607) 539 6254 <tel:%28607%29%20539%206254>    paul.houle on
>>     Skype ontology2@gmail.com <mailto: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
>     Personal Weblog 2:http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen  <http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen>
>     Twitter Profile:https://twitter.com/kidehen
>     Google+ Profile:https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/about
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>     Personal WebID:http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
> Deputy Director, Web Science Research Center
> Tetherless World Constellation (RPI)
> <http://tw.rpi.edu> <olyerickson@gmail.com <mailto:olyerickson@gmail.com>>
> Twitter & Skype: olyerickson


-- 
Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog 1: http://kidehen.blogspot.com
Personal Weblog 2: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/kidehen
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Received on Monday, 6 October 2014 16:46:01 UTC