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From: lamaster@viking.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster)
Subject: Re: Publishing Scholarly Work on the Web -- opinions?
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center
Date: 19 Sep 1996 22:32:49 GMT
Message-ID: <51shmh$pqj@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>

In article <323C7D44.1A0B15E2@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>,
 Bernd Paysan <paysan@informatik.tu-muenchen.de> writes:

|> Alden S Klovdahl wrote:
|> > 2.  there is no contradiction between the idea of web publishing and
|> >     peer review.  if a person wants comments on a paper, he or she can
|> >     put it on their own web page, get speedy publication, and solicit
|> >     feedback.

The nice thing about Web publishing is that a lot of published "papers"
these days are not really scholarly at all anyway, and, are very ephemeral, 
basically just current engineering, of no interest after the next 
generation of RISC chips (or whatever) come out.

For these mostly-engineering-information not-very-academic
kinds of things, Web/Electronic publishing is ideal.  Hopefully, one
of these days, there will be a nice way to automatically log references
by other Web pages, giving a lower-bound on the number of pages 
referring to your page, and therefore, a rough idea of how useful 
others found your page.

The only thing wrong with it, is, if you are an academic,
Web pages are not likely to get you tenure in the near future.

And, in any case, there is an aspect to the process of 
peer-review/journal-publish, and that is, that a group of
peers gave a stamp of approval saying that the work is
worth archiving "for the ages" on paper.  But, the Web 
is so egalitarian that each of us could "publish" 20 novels-- 
none of which anyone would want to read.  So, how will we
manage the "sifting" process that now takes place via
scholarly journals?

|> > 3.  there is nothing that precludes publishing in both electronic and
|> >     traditional media.
|> 
|> Yes, there is. Journals and conferences want to be "first". There is no
|> way to be first, if the paper was published half a year earlier in the
|> Web (this is the mean time between submit deadline and conference). So
|> you sign (or declare) that your paper is yet unpublished.

Often, IF a paper is an "internal report", a journal will accept
republication.  I guess the jury is still out on how Web pages
will be treated.  Journal publishing has long been mostly an
archival process already, not a communication process, and we
have effectively solved only the small remaining communication part.
But, the judgement, the sifting, the archival parts are actually
the parts of "publication" that make it worthwhile.  The question
is how to pay for the fixed-cost parts of the operation?

|> There is another limitation for publication: size. A paper for a
|> conference should not be longer than 5000 words, e.g.. This is a good
|> limitation for a conference papers, because you don't want to reed lots
|> of novels there. Details, however, get lost in these papers. The web is
|> a way around it. You publish the elaborate work in the web, for the
|> curious (those who really want to read it), and the condensed form in a
|> "normal" media.

This may actually be a good model: already, in many fields, 
journal articles are so polished and condensed that "history"
is lost- all you see is the final, polished sculpture.
In many cases, it would be nice to see more of the intermediate
process.

|> This is even a way around the restrictions journals and conferences
|> poses. You can sign that your paper is yet unpublished (because it is a
|> condensed form of an already published work ;-).

----


|> Personally, I doubt that any form of traditional publishing will survive
|> this revolution. 

Personally, I think many forms of printed media, especially books,
and magazines, will persist for a long time.  What isn't clear is
whether newspapers will survive [they depend too much on classified
ad revenue that probably should be in searchable databases], and,
scholarly journals.  You may remember the article, "Will Xerox
kill Gutenberg?"  Passe' - Gutenberg survived that, but now
von Neumann is killing Gutenberg in the scholarly arena.


                     It's the third revolution after the invention of
|> writing and the invention of movable letters. Do you know any monk
|> copying books? Peer reviewed web sites remind me on the irregular
|> letters and the handpainted illustrations Gutenberg uses for his first
|> printed bible to imitate hand-written books. A web site with high
|> reputation better should collect good work all over the web. Because
|> it's all second source, be comprehensive will be more important than be
|> first. A good and important work can be found at any such site then.
|> 
|> Those who think the web is a new sort of television are completely
|> wrong. The web is a new sort of a publishing house, one that allows
|> everyone to publish for very few (or almost no) costs, and a danger for
|> every other form of publishing (because all they are more expensive and
|> slower). The two reasons why the web hasn't replaced them now are:
|> availability and money. Many people don't have access to the web, and
|> the concepts to earn a living by pubhlishing on the web are incomplete.


Mostly agree, but, let's face it.  When you want to *read* something,
paper is still better, and if you are talking about a mass-produced
magazine, paper is cheaper, too, and, it doesn't give you RSI.  
It is really in the scholarly arena, where the fixed-costs are so high,
and the number of consumers so miniscule (due to specialization), 
that electronic publishing has an enormous advantage.



-- 
  Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-18,    Email:       Please send ASCII documents to:
  NASA Ames Research Center     Internet:    lamaster@ames.arc.nasa.gov
  Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000  Or:          lamaster@george.arc.nasa.gov 
  Phone:  415/604-1056          Disclaimer:  Unofficial, personal *opinion*.

