User:Daniel Mietchen/Talks/COASP 2010/Notes

Background

 * 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)

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)

Wikis as platforms for scholarly publishing

 * The idea is not new &mdash; 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 / contextualized talks and Posters (possibly also as clickable imagemaps, like here)


 * Research papers: Accompanied by wiki article, 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) &mdash; 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).

Business models

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

Opportunities

 * Article-specific Job ads (e.g. via subpages)
 * 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)


 * Integration of non-text media with text (just like images)
 * Also for references