Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

Apologies for a late and top-posted response. I didn't follow the thread
closely until it got interesting. I respect Sarven's work and appreciate
his tireless advocacy for improved practices of scholarly communication.
But making scholarly documents webby and decentralized is only part of
the solution, and not the most important part.

Scholarly communication, being just a refined way of thinking, is about
getting ideas from the mind of one person into the mind of another. On
the surface that appears to happen by sending a string of words from one
person to another. But what really happens is that the two minds
involved come to a mutual understanding of *terms*, *propositions*,
*evidence*, and *arguments*. That is not to say the minds agree--only
that, in any particular monograph, they understand these components well
enough to pursue rational discussion. In paper and paper-like systems of
communication, the capable reader will parse out the terms,
propositions, evidence, and arguments from the surface string of words
(and the considerate writer will try not to make this too difficult).

Every scholarly article should have a digital manifest that includes:
precise definitions of all significant terms used by the author
(obviously as URIs); machine-readable propositions and arguments the
author wishes to make regarding said terms; evidence, or links to
evidence, that the author wishes to submit for examination (along with
suitable description and provenance statements) to substantiate the
terms, propositions, and arguments. The narrative article should contain
anchors at points relevant to the manifest contents, to allow building a
human-readable, machine-actionable web of commentary, supporting and
contrary evidence, and counter-argument.

That is truly "scientific" publishing on the web.

Regards,
--Paul

On Tue, 2018-02-20 at 20:06 -0300, Daniel Schwabe wrote:
> Hi Ruben,
> 
> > On Feb 20, 2018, at 17:09  - 20/02/18, Ruben Verborgh
> > <Ruben.Verborgh@UGent.be> wrote:
> > 
> > > ...I think this explains why they haven't been widely adopted,
> > > even by expert practitioners of the technology itself.
> > 
> > I think the bigger problem here is the valuation that universities
> > give to print over paper;
> > I don't think it's a technological issue, as I'll show below.
> > 
> I contend that the reasons Universities (and other institutions) value
> print over paper are basically the same as I outlined before. 
> > 
> > > Take 1, for example. We have all been trained on how to write
> > > sequentially (as Ted Nelson puts it…). Nobody really knows how to
> > > write hypertext properly; we don’t even know what are the criteria
> > > and parameters to evaluate hypertext as an effective media for
> > > communication (of any kind, not only scholarly!). I claim that to
> > > use the Web in a really webby way one should author “proper”
> > > hypertexts.
> > 
> > Maybe, but that does not make the Web a worse candidate for 1. From
> > what you're saying, I deduce that the Web covers all
> > functionality that print also covers for 1. So it's mature in that
> > regard.
> > 
> Well, if you are just replacing “carbon with silicon”, i.e., simply
> replacing the support for the documents, I don’t really see much
> advantage to changing the current status quo, where this already
> happens with the use of PDFs, for example. I was referring to truly
> native Web documents.
> > 
> > With regard to hypertext, specifically for research, I think that
> > “clickable” references in articles are a huge leap forward compared
> > to looking up numbers in a list. And that's just one thing.
> > 
> This would be a very simple improvement from the print-based document
> model, with a convenient way to consume them if you are doing it on an
> internet-connected device. PDFs with embedded clickable links would
> suffice. Not enough to justify more “radical” changes.
> 
> > > Regarding 2, in addition to the issue above, there are a whole
> > > slew of new (social) process alternatives enabled by the
> > > technologies, for which again we haven’t yet found a consensus
> > > within the community on how to proceed (e.g., reviewing process,
> > > identity/authentication, provenance, social networking, etc…). I
> > > expect time will show what works, and how.
> > 
> > Well, the reviewing process already happens on the Web, even for
> > articles that are designed as PDF.
> > So we got that working.
> > 
> Absolutely not. The Web in this case functions merely as a
> communications medium, supporting current practices/processes. As you
> say, this already happens, no need to change anything. But I’m
> thinking of (again) truly web-native process, as some proposals
> already make (I’m not going to mention specific ones…). I am sure I
> don’t have to detail this to you, as you know and practice that
> yourself.
> > 
> > > Regarding 3, it’s not clear at all how long will the communication
> > > made via the new technologies will really last… we see already
> > > evidence of link rot, for instance, even for recent content. For
> > > example, can we safely assume that the contents made available
> > > using the new technologies will be available, accessible and
> > > usable 20 years from now? Actually, some may even ask, Is this a
> > > real requirement at all?
> > 
> > Web archiving is working well so far. And one can always print a
> > webpage.
> > 
> Hmm, this sounds to me as an argument to maintain the status quo. In
> other words, never mind the technological archiving alternative, use
> paper as a backup. Then why not stick to paper?
> > 
> > But then again, many of the PDF articles are not printed anymore
> > either, so that problem doesn't go away.
> > 
> Right, one more reason to stick to paper, no?
> 
> > (BTW, in this context, do watch
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4nUe-6Ln-8)
> > 
> Will do, thanks!
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > So summarizing, even though your 3 requirements seem valid,
> > I haven't found a reason in there not to publish in a more webby
> > way,
> > 
> I suspect we are interpreting “webby” in different ways. I still think
> my admittedly feeble argument as to why current technologies are still
> preferable, from a community point of view (including all the
> stakeholders, not only the researchers themselves…) still stand.
> > especially given that the supposedly “print” process already takes
> > places on the Web.
> > 
> See above - “takes place on the Web” can be understood in many ways;
> I’m discounting the case in which the Web is being used as a digital
> support for “traditional” ways, for the reasons argued above and
> previously.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> D
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 21 February 2018 04:15:36 UTC