User:Daniel Mietchen/Talks/COASP 2010/Notes

Background

(CC) Image: Public Library of Science
Do journals provide sufficient contextualization for research?

• For technical reasons, publishing was historically a separate step, performed about once per iteration of the research cycle

• Publishing every relevant bit of information immediately at each step is technically feasible now, and the remaining hurdles are cultural ones.

• Wikis allow for systematic linking and thus enhanced contextualization (sidenote: some have argued that links are distracting)

• Overview of the evolution of wikis and wiki-like environments

Mentions MediaWiki plugin for Wordpress

Etherpad

Google Docs

Wikis as platforms for science communication

• Wikis can be used, in principle, for any aspect of scholarly communication, as detailed in this comparison of wiki- and paper-based communication systems and the related blog post.

• Examples exist for all steps of the research cycle, except successful applications to major funders (see this overview for some attempts)

• Benchmark: English Wikipedia

Wikis as platforms for scholarly publishing

• The idea is not new — WikiSciencePublication stated in 2006:

"Somewhere at the fringe of science, someone will start using wiki publishing for science publishing."

• Conferences: Stand-alone site / contextualized schedule / talks, contextualized talks and Posters (possibly also as clickable imagemaps, like here), presentations

• Research papers: Accompanied by wiki article (progress report), contextualized on-wiki, links to wikis amongst other sources, integrated into database

• Review articles: Scholarly / Outreach

• Books

• References

• Publication lists (incl. supplementary materials and in principle direct links to the raw data)

• built-in article-level metrics at bottom of page and via What links here (which could also be used for other pages, e.g. those hosting images, references, or datasets), author-level metrics via Special:Contributions, further aggregation possible (e.g. at the level of research projects, labs or thematic workgroups)

• Wikipedia Journal

• Knol shares some aspects with wikis and blogs and is already in use for PLoS Currents.

Wikis as platforms for Open Access publishing

• The majority of wiki platforms are open access by default, and most variants of wiki software can handle user rights in great detail

• Stresses the re-use part of CC licenses (e.g. for images) — an aspect of OA publishing that does not receive much attention outside research blogs (cf. detailed discussion with respect to the American Physical Society, arxiv and Quantiki, and the final outcome: APS authors keep copyright over derivative works).

Quality assessment

In principle, any system of peer review can be implemented on a wiki: The usual single-blind as well as double-blind or open peer review, with the reviewers or even authors always or optionally, temporarily or permanently remaining anonymous, with simple accept/ revise/ reject decisions or interactive two-stage or multi-stage discussions, in public or hidden from it (possibly even in part), before and/ or after formal publication.

Some wiki examples:

1. Scholarpedia
2. EoEarth
3. Citizendium

Some non-wiki examples:

1. Copernicus journals
2. PLoS journals
3. Frontiers journals
4. BMC journals

1. Semantic Web journal
2. Rejecta Mathematics

Business models

• Main ones: author-pays, (partial) subscription, philanthropy, advertising, premium services

Opportunities

• Article-specific Job ads (e.g. via subpages)
• Wiki for Calls For Papers
• Post-publication peer review: Faculty of 1000, The Third Reviewer, Rejecta Mathematica
• Wiki export, or standardized XML or HTML output that could be imported to a wiki via some xml2wiki or similar converters
• Image search (example) and annotation
• Search by license (prototypes: journals, images)

PD Image
Search by license — not possible yet. Why?

• Semantic integration

Non-wiki example

MediaWiki as a blog, using Semantic MediaWiki

• Integration of non-text media with text (just like images; non-wiki audio example)

Also for references

• Automated pre-population from databases

Notes

Essential elements of science publishing:

• Research
• Documentation
• Making things public
• Integration with previous and future knowledge
• Discussion