Comments on: The “Article of the Future” — Just Lipstick Again? http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/ What's Hot & What's Cooking in Scholarly Publishing - from the Society for Scholarly Publishing Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:52:19 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Elsevier/ScienceDirect, recent happenings and discussions in blogosphere « Random Thoughts http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/#comment-4252 Elsevier/ScienceDirect, recent happenings and discussions in blogosphere « Random Thoughts Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:30:46 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=5163#comment-4252 [...] subscription which is struggling hard against undercurrent of open access. For example Scholarly kitchen writes Elsevier is just trying to put web 2.0 lipstick on a pig (the traditional print article). According [...] [...] subscription which is struggling hard against undercurrent of open access. For example Scholarly kitchen writes Elsevier is just trying to put web 2.0 lipstick on a pig (the traditional print article). According [...]

]]> By: Richard O'Beirne http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/#comment-4161 Richard O'Beirne Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:58:35 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=5163#comment-4161 I've just been reminded of http://imageweb.zoo.ox.ac.uk/pub/2008/plospaper/latest/ which is a much worthier claimant of the 'article of the future' title. Although keeping the current form of a scientific article, and similar in some ways to Project Prospect's semantic markup from RSC, it moves beyond both in interesting ways (e.g. citation typing). I’ve just been reminded of
http://imageweb.zoo.ox.ac.uk/pub/2008/plospaper/latest/
which is a much worthier claimant of the ‘article of the future’ title. Although keeping the current form of a scientific article, and similar in some ways to Project Prospect’s semantic markup from RSC, it moves beyond both in interesting ways (e.g. citation typing).

]]> By: Articles of the Future « Leaves A Mark http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/#comment-4087 Articles of the Future « Leaves A Mark Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:26:31 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=5163#comment-4087 [...] Anderson of The Scholarly Kitchen says it “looks like an article from the past, with some embedded hyperlinks, some AJAX tabs, two basic... Paul Carvill at the Online Journalism Blog calls the prototypes “underwhelming, cumbersome [...] [...] Anderson of The Scholarly Kitchen says it “looks like an article from the past, with some embedded hyperlinks, some AJAX tabs, two basic… Paul Carvill at the Online Journalism Blog calls the prototypes “underwhelming, cumbersome [...]

]]> By: “Article of the Future”: New direction for scientific publishing? : meldinme http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/#comment-4041 “Article of the Future”: New direction for scientific publishing? : meldinme Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:14:35 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=5163#comment-4041 [...] Kent Anderson on the scholarly kitchen blog (which focuses on scholarly publishing): The “Article of the Future” — Just Lipstick Again? [...] [...] Kent Anderson on the scholarly kitchen blog (which focuses on scholarly publishing): The “Article of the Future” — Just Lipstick Again? [...]

]]> By: Kent Anderson http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/#comment-3983 Kent Anderson Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:55:34 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=5163#comment-3983 Well, I think Wilbanks is saying something else. Documents as a concept of a finite expression of thought certainly make sense. Who wants an endless data stream of revisions, qualifications, and additions? How that's realized is the opportunity here. Look at the Cell prototypes. The figures are ganged. Why? Because they were formatted for print. Why have panels 1a-1f when you can have a carousel? Why have supplementary figures, defined by their not being included in the print version? Why only show pictures of data instead of having data applications? Wilbanks is talking about an infrastructure for documents that's different from the infrastructure for PRINT documents. He's talking about an infrastructure for DIGITAL documents. Blogs hint at what is possible. I can put a video, hyperlink, audio file, picture, or even program file into a blog post with ease. Most scientists are writing digital documents, manipulating electronic data, and managing digital images, yet publishers habitually don't support the transfer of native formats and don't provide tools for integration with existing data the publisher might own. There are so many opportunities here, but Elsevier and others are focusing on the wrong thing. Anyone experimenting in this area needs to look at the authoring environment. SEED has done this, and could do more. And, why an article? Why not a document that's an interactive lesson? An audio file? So much potential . . . Well, I think Wilbanks is saying something else. Documents as a concept of a finite expression of thought certainly make sense. Who wants an endless data stream of revisions, qualifications, and additions? How that’s realized is the opportunity here. Look at the Cell prototypes. The figures are ganged. Why? Because they were formatted for print. Why have panels 1a-1f when you can have a carousel? Why have supplementary figures, defined by their not being included in the print version? Why only show pictures of data instead of having data applications?

Wilbanks is talking about an infrastructure for documents that’s different from the infrastructure for PRINT documents. He’s talking about an infrastructure for DIGITAL documents. Blogs hint at what is possible. I can put a video, hyperlink, audio file, picture, or even program file into a blog post with ease. Most scientists are writing digital documents, manipulating electronic data, and managing digital images, yet publishers habitually don’t support the transfer of native formats and don’t provide tools for integration with existing data the publisher might own. There are so many opportunities here, but Elsevier and others are focusing on the wrong thing. Anyone experimenting in this area needs to look at the authoring environment. SEED has done this, and could do more.

And, why an article? Why not a document that’s an interactive lesson? An audio file? So much potential . . .

]]> By: Mike Beveridge http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/07/21/the-article-of-the-future-lipstick-on-a-pig/#comment-3980 Mike Beveridge Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:00:39 +0000 http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/?p=5163#comment-3980 Kent-- Thanks for another interesting post. I just came across an (older) relevant post from John Wilbanks' Common Knowledge blog (which I found through Michael Neilsen, whose post on disruption in scientific publishing you referred to in your "Fixed Costs of Fixed Ideas" post [http://tinyurl.com/m233yq]). Wilbanks was discussing on Seed Media's "State of Innovation" Summit on June 23 and commented on the technical infrastructure for innovation [http://tinyurl.com/mbe89q]: "There's no conversation about technical infrastructure for innovation.... There is the assumption that because the web works for culture, it works for science. But the Web is a system built for documents - it's infrastructure for documents. Science innovation depends on data.... Infrastructure for making the web function on data is woeful - format standards, annotation, and so on are always underfunded and first to cut in crisis. Infrastructure for data integration, data federation, and so forth should be encoded directly into the open standards of the web and internet. Full stop. And we should talk about this problem more often. Otherwise people look at their iPhones, check for a latte, and assume this level of functionality scales from coffee to the bench. It doesn't." I certainly agree that as publishers we need to experiment more, but perhaps part of the reason the online articles of the future look like the articles of the present is that articles are documents, and as Wilbanks points out, the web prefers documents. Kent– Thanks for another interesting post. I just came across an (older) relevant post from John Wilbanks’ Common Knowledge blog (which I found through Michael Neilsen, whose post on disruption in scientific publishing you referred to in your “Fixed Costs of Fixed Ideas” post [http://tinyurl.com/m233yq]).

Wilbanks was discussing on Seed Media’s “State of Innovation” Summit on June 23 and commented on the technical infrastructure for innovation [http://tinyurl.com/mbe89q]:

“There’s no conversation about technical infrastructure for innovation…. There is the assumption that because the web works for culture, it works for science. But the Web is a system built for documents – it’s infrastructure for documents. Science innovation depends on data…. Infrastructure for making the web function on data is woeful – format standards, annotation, and so on are always underfunded and first to cut in crisis.

Infrastructure for data integration, data federation, and so forth should be encoded directly into the open standards of the web and internet. Full stop. And we should talk about this problem more often. Otherwise people look at their iPhones, check for a latte, and assume this level of functionality scales from coffee to the bench. It doesn’t.”

I certainly agree that as publishers we need to experiment more, but perhaps part of the reason the online articles of the future look like the articles of the present is that articles are documents, and as Wilbanks points out, the web prefers documents.

]]>