Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 11:38:32 +0000, Ruben Verborgh <Ruben.Verborgh@UGent.be> wrote:
> Also, in this case, the unfortunate irony of having a conference about
> the Web but simultaneously implying that the Web is insufficient for
> recognized scientific publication is of course something we should
> dare to talk about and challenge.
> 
> Let's have some room for introspection and honesty.  What is really
> stopping us from taking the Web seriously as researchers?  And how can
> we preach one thing in our works, but practice another?

Well said. There are many scholarly activities around Web research
(covering both semantic and social aspects), which is exciting; yet
somehow the way we write and publish about this is often not on the web,
or not using web technologies (e.g. .tex -> PDF with footnote hyperlinks
-> "html" on publisher website)

Is it because of the review process where we (feel we) need some static
document "file" to pass around? HTML works well inside ZIP files,
and even live websites can be archived with https://web.archive.org/
but admitedly there is not an easy "one answer" here yet on what form a
webby article submission takes.


I am as guilty of this as anyone - my personal website was last updated
in 2009 - and yes, it does all take time. But we do seem to still be
able to find time to write traditional PDFs, which often end up behind
paywalls, but seldom end up on printed paper. 

Questions should rightfully be asked, so I welcome Sarven's views -
although I wish we could keep a good colleagual tone on this list. It is
also fine to disagree - but then the case should be made for the
traditional approach.


Can we at least try to find time to *enable* Web Research to be on the
web? Still allow old-skool PDFs (for now..) but always have the option
(and actively encourage) to instead submit/link webby HTML articles.
You may just need to add "html" and "zip" to your easychair
upload list.



-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes
The University of Manchester
http://www.esciencelab.org.uk/
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 14:52:33 UTC