http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Publisher-Steps-Up/128031/
People are exchanging and selling access to the databases to get the damn science.
This is why we need to keep pushing the free content and open access message. You cannot do science in a system with these effects.
- d.
On 26 June 2011 21:12, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Publisher-Steps-Up/128031/
People are exchanging and selling access to the databases to get the damn science.
This is why we need to keep pushing the free content and open access message.
While back channel paper exchange is pretty common I doubt that the people stealing passwords are actually doing much in the way of science. Things are so specialised these days that people doing much in the way of serious science probably know the dozen or so other people in their field well enough for them be to emailed their papers directly.
While there are many many things wrong with the current scientific publishing model (start with it's a parasite with lower ethical standards than Microsoft and then work your way up) I don't think a trade in passwords in indicative of much.
I don't know much about the situation in the humanities though.
You cannot do science in a system with these effects.
In fairness you demonstrably can. Of course it's an open question how many people really are.
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 22:03, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know much about the situation in the humanities though.
There's a nice little undercurrent of paper exchange - some legitimate (asking the author for copies, getting PDFs from author websites, getting stuff from university pre-print draft repositories), some not so legitimate (*cough*BitTorrent*cough*) - much as there is in science, dampened only by the fact that less work in the humanities is done in journal papers and more in books.
Sadly, compared to science, the embrace of the alternative (open access, Creative Commons etc.) is very slow. Although the argument for public access and against oligopoly publishers that is used for open access science also applies in the humanities, in science it is strengthened by the desire for open access data that the published study draw on be also be made available online, while in, say, philosophy, Plato and Kant are already meet the 'open access' standard. ;-)
A lot of the slightly older stuff is in JSTOR, which isn't open access, but the access requirements demanded of subscribing institutions go in the 'fairly expensive' category rather than the 'brutally fisted with stinging nettles by Satan himself' category.
The system of charging readers for distribution of scientific information is fundamentally flawed. Wikipedia demonstrates that it is cheap to host data. Reviewers don't get paid. Companies pay plenty to advertise in journals. Why do I have to pay $50 to read someone's research?
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:45 PM, David Richfield davidrichfield@gmail.com wrote:
The system of charging readers for distribution of scientific information is fundamentally flawed. Wikipedia demonstrates that it is cheap to host data. Reviewers don't get paid. Companies pay plenty to advertise in journals. Why do I have to pay $50 to read someone's research?
We need a Wikijournal project, where scientists can do all the functions of a journal without any prior approval-- collectively form groups, review, and publish. Free content is going to capture science eventually-- scientists want open content too badly for the research journal monopoly to last forever. The only question is-- how can WM help ignite this revolution waiting to happen? If we're really lucky, can we ourselves be the home to the successor of the for-profit journal system.
On 6 July 2011 20:58, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
We need a Wikijournal project, where scientists can do all the functions of a journal without any prior approval-- collectively form groups, review, and publish. Free content is going to capture science eventually-- scientists want open content too badly for the research journal monopoly to last forever. The only question is-- how can WM help ignite this revolution waiting to happen? If we're really lucky, can we ourselves be the home to the successor of the for-profit journal system.
Academic peer-review is a rather un-wiki process. Possibly a first step is encouraging arXiv-like preprint archives for other fields - arXiv has become pretty much *the* first place to stake out your credit in physics.
- d.
Once it is published, can't it just go to Wikisource? Or would it have to be CC-By or something like that. If so, Wikisource would still be the best suited for that, we would just have to put it in a journal namespace or something along that line.
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:17 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 6 July 2011 20:58, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
We need a Wikijournal project, where scientists can do all the functions of a journal without any prior approval-- collectively form groups, review, and publish. Free content is going to capture science eventually-- scientists want open content too badly for the research journal monopoly to last forever. The only question is-- how can WM help ignite this revolution waiting to happen? If we're really lucky, can we ourselves be the home to the successor of the for-profit journal system.
Academic peer-review is a rather un-wiki process. Possibly a first step is encouraging arXiv-like preprint archives for other fields - arXiv has become pretty much *the* first place to stake out your credit in physics.
- d.
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On 6 July 2011 21:29, Arlen Beiler arlenbee@gmail.com wrote:
Once it is published, can't it just go to Wikisource? Or would it have to be CC-By or something like that. If so, Wikisource would still be the best suited for that, we would just have to put it in a journal namespace or something along that line.
Remember that en:wp's "no original research" rule was invented for physics cranks. And even with fairly light moderation, arXiv features some spectacularly gibbering [[green ink]]. This will need some thought to create something that's actually useful to anyone, anywhere, ever.
- d.
Remember that en:wp's "no original research" rule was invented for physics cranks. And even with fairly light moderation, arXiv features some spectacularly gibbering [[green ink]]. This will need some thought to create something that's actually useful to anyone, anywhere, ever.
A "free journal" would be very unlike our existing projects. The scientists need to be able to just take their entire publication process to a free platform-- with no other alterations in how they do things. Science is its own community, so it wouldn't be a project that 'anyone can edit', it would a project that does exactly what the existing process does, except for free.
And being free is inherently better. Nobody who spends two years of their life on a two page article wants to see it hidden behind a pay wall. Scientists really want to be free, they just need the right partner to help them.
Alec
2011/7/6 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
On 6 July 2011 21:29, Arlen Beiler arlenbee@gmail.com wrote:
Once it is published, can't it just go to Wikisource? Or would it have to
be
CC-By or something like that. If so, Wikisource would still be the best suited for that, we would just have to put it in a journal namespace or something along that line.
As I see it, there are some technical/organizational issues. Wikisource accepts CC-BY-SA/CC-BY texts (and often OA articles use these licenses), but does not change the text it self, only maybe in terms of format and layout. It's a policy of the project to be absolutely coherent with the source. This solves the issue of modifying the article itslef, and having it in the exact words of the author.
But the current architecture is designed for digitization of paper books: as I see it, we lack a simple, easy way to upload and show born digital documents, as scientific articles would be. I mean, we can always (and sometimes we do) ri-shape articles in wikitext and put them in the ns0 of Wikisource, or event upload the article on Commons and re-transcribe the text with the pdf as a scan, but you see this is reinventing the wheel, everytime. I still don't know how could we do, but I feel that we should have a more automatic way to upload this kind of content (and then giving it our added value, as wikilinks etc.) (for example, we could accept latex as it is...)
Aubrey
On de.wikisource.org they scan every page of the original text, upload the scan on Commons and show the scan on the right part of every page as an image. It is even obligatory to have the original scan of the text.
The following page is an example: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Oberamt_Tettnang_231.jpg (I just hit the random page)
Greetings Ting
Am 07.07.2011 07:57, schrieb Andrea Zanni:
2011/7/6 David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com
On 6 July 2011 21:29, Arlen Beilerarlenbee@gmail.com wrote:
Once it is published, can't it just go to Wikisource? Or would it have to
be
CC-By or something like that. If so, Wikisource would still be the best suited for that, we would just have to put it in a journal namespace or something along that line.
As I see it, there are some technical/organizational issues. Wikisource accepts CC-BY-SA/CC-BY texts (and often OA articles use these licenses), but does not change the text it self, only maybe in terms of format and layout. It's a policy of the project to be absolutely coherent with the source. This solves the issue of modifying the article itslef, and having it in the exact words of the author.
But the current architecture is designed for digitization of paper books: as I see it, we lack a simple, easy way to upload and show born digital documents, as scientific articles would be. I mean, we can always (and sometimes we do) ri-shape articles in wikitext and put them in the ns0 of Wikisource, or event upload the article on Commons and re-transcribe the text with the pdf as a scan, but you see this is reinventing the wheel, everytime. I still don't know how could we do, but I feel that we should have a more automatic way to upload this kind of content (and then giving it our added value, as wikilinks etc.) (for example, we could accept latex as it is...)
Aubrey _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2011/7/7 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de
On de.wikisource.org they scan every page of the original text, upload the scan on Commons and show the scan on the right part of every page as an image. It is even obligatory to have the original scan of the text.
The following page is an example: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Oberamt_Tettnang_231.jpg (I just hit the random page)
I know - in fact, it was exactly what I wanted to explain :-) I think this system is perfect for digitized documents, aka paper documents which has been scanned and need transcription.
MVHO is that the same system is redundant for born-digital documents. If we use the Proofread Extension (that's how it's called), you need to re-transcribe the whole text, or at least have it formatted. Then you transclude the text in ns0. The text is reliable, but it is a lot of work, and lot of it is just redundant (why write by hand something tha has just benn written in a good pdf?).
If we use the simple ns0 (many wikisources are not so sctrict as de.source in this regard) you need to do the same (transform in wikitext, format). So the issues remain.
Now, I was wondering if we can find another (technical? organizational? political?)solution for born-digital documents, as pdf, scientific articles etc.
Aubrey
There are some extensions out there to accept latex and convert it to wikitext. CK12 used one, I believe. That seems like an easy improvement to wikisource, not a separate project.
I agree that we could have a wikijournal for contemporary publication - as a WS namespace if not a separate project. PLoS and arXiv offer some guidelines for low-overhead moderation, and we could have a 'quarantine' for possible crank submissions that are posted but not yet given that light review. We have enough attention now in most sciences, if not in every field, to get input from solid reviewers.
S.
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:50 AM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
2011/7/7 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de
On de.wikisource.org they scan every page of the original text, upload the scan on Commons and show the scan on the right part of every page as an image. It is even obligatory to have the original scan of the text.
The following page is an example: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Oberamt_Tettnang_231.jpg (I just hit the random page)
I know - in fact, it was exactly what I wanted to explain :-) I think this system is perfect for digitized documents, aka paper documents which has been scanned and need transcription.
MVHO is that the same system is redundant for born-digital documents. If we use the Proofread Extension (that's how it's called), you need to re-transcribe the whole text, or at least have it formatted. Then you transclude the text in ns0. The text is reliable, but it is a lot of work, and lot of it is just redundant (why write by hand something tha has just benn written in a good pdf?).
If we use the simple ns0 (many wikisources are not so sctrict as de.source in this regard) you need to do the same (transform in wikitext, format). So the issues remain.
Now, I was wondering if we can find another (technical? organizational? political?)solution for born-digital documents, as pdf, scientific articles etc.
Aubrey _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Jul 7, 2011, at 2:50 AM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
2011/7/7 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de
On de.wikisource.org they scan every page of the original text, upload the scan on Commons and show the scan on the right part of every page as an image. It is even obligatory to have the original scan of the text.
The following page is an example: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Oberamt_Tettnang_231.jpg (I just hit the random page)
I know - in fact, it was exactly what I wanted to explain :-) I think this system is perfect for digitized documents, aka paper documents which has been scanned and need transcription.
MVHO is that the same system is redundant for born-digital documents. If we use the Proofread Extension (that's how it's called), you need to re-transcribe the whole text, or at least have it formatted. Then you transclude the text in ns0. The text is reliable, but it is a lot of work, and lot of it is just redundant (why write by hand something tha has just benn written in a good pdf?).
If we use the simple ns0 (many wikisources are not so sctrict as de.source in this regard) you need to do the same (transform in wikitext, format). So the issues remain.
Now, I was wondering if we can find another (technical? organizational? political?)solution for born-digital documents, as pdf, scientific articles etc.
You hardly need to re-transcribe the digital document. You just need to re-format the images and special text within the paste, edit in appropriate wikilinks, and proofread it to ensure nothing was misplaced. Proofreading is not at all redundant for documents that have been re-formatted with only the lightest editing. I am certain you will find something to correct in any document of length, no matter how little editing you feel you have done. Having a corpus with some depth on Wikisource will open up a much different reading experience than an index of PDFs, even though the words all match. Just look at what is being done with the SCOTUS documents, Wikis simply offer a richer study environment for documents that are properly linked together than other sorts of digital libraries. For all that born digital documents emphasize the "digital" they often treat the text as if printed on a page by regularly using hypertext only in footnoted references. It is worth putting such things on Wikisource, if you can anticipate being able to get a decent sized corpus of scholarship of some field under a free license. And that will vary by field and maybe even sub-specialty.
BirgitteSB
2011/7/9 Birgitte_sb@yahoo.com
You hardly need to re-transcribe the digital document. You just need to re-format the images and special text within the paste, edit in appropriate wikilinks, and proofread it to ensure nothing was misplaced.
Yes, this is true, but as you know well this already much work. If you are a scholar/student, and you want to share an article or a dissertation, you need to know a lot of about the architecture of Wikisource, and recreate the logical structure of a thesis, format it in wiki-text and proofread throurogh 3 quality levels in not a simple, easy job.
Proofreading is not at all redundant for documents that have been re-formatted with only the lightest editing. I am certain you will find something to correct in any document of length, no matter how little editing you feel you have done.
I agree, but I always feel a little discomfort when I know that proofreading has just been done on a born-digital text, and I need to spend hours on that text just to find some typos (maybe it's me, but sometimes I don't find it worth it)
Having a corpus with some depth on Wikisource will open up a much different reading experience than an index of PDFs, even though the words all match. Just look at what is being done with the SCOTUS documents, Wikis simply offer a richer study environment for documents that are properly linked together than other sorts of digital libraries. For all that born digital documents emphasize the "digital" they often treat the text as if printed on a page by regularly using hypertext only in footnoted references. It is worth putting such things on Wikisource, if you can anticipate being able to get a decent sized corpus of scholarship of some field under a free license. And that will vary by field and maybe even sub-specialty.
Yes, it is definiw ittely worth it to put all these text on Wikisource. I uploaded my thesis years ago, also with the explicit aim to test the potential hypertextual features of Wikisource (in it.source we have proper template for Work and Author citations, and I find them the real added value of our digital library).
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text? I clearly remeber the "Screw it" feeling I had the day after I graduated, meaning that I would not even touch my thesis again for the next months (and so it was).
I'm not offering solutions here, but if we want to work in the direction of Open Access and of reaching a massive audience out there, maybe we should think out of the (current) box.
Aubrey
BirgitteSB
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On Jul 9, 2011, at 4:06 PM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
2011/7/9 Birgitte_sb@yahoo.com
Snip
Having a corpus with some depth on Wikisource will open up a much different reading experience than an index of PDFs, even though the words all match. Just look at what is being done with the SCOTUS documents, Wikis simply offer a richer study environment for documents that are properly linked together than other sorts of digital libraries. For all that born digital documents emphasize the "digital" they often treat the text as if printed on a page by regularly using hypertext only in footnoted references. It is worth putting such things on Wikisource, if you can anticipate being able to get a decent sized corpus of scholarship of some field under a free license. And that will vary by field and maybe even sub-specialty.
Yes, it is definiw ittely worth it to put all these text on Wikisource. I uploaded my thesis years ago, also with the explicit aim to test the potential hypertextual features of Wikisource (in it.source we have proper template for Work and Author citations, and I find them the real added value of our digital library).
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text? I clearly remeber the "Screw it" feeling I had the day after I graduated, meaning that I would not even touch my thesis again for the next months (and so it was).
I'm not offering solutions here, but if we want to work in the direction of Open Access and of reaching a massive audience out there, maybe we should think out of the (current) box.
I wouldn't really expect authors adding their thesis to Wikisource piecemeal, at least unitil there is some critical mass reached in their area of scholarship. It would be probably started by someone more interested in creating well-linked coverage of a topic. Definitely it needs someone with a strong interest in curating schorship of Foo in big-picture way.
BirgitteSB
Andrea, I hear you suggesting that we need a different upload process for pdfs and other documents, wherein when you upload them there is a "digital document to paged wikitext" script that runs and generates an appropriate result, which can then be imported elsewhere on the projects as needed.
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text?
Right - these should be doable by different people. An ambassador to an institutional repository should be able to collect approving signatures and do a bulk upload him/herself.
-- Sam.
2011/7/12 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
Andrea, I hear you suggesting that we need a different upload process for pdfs and other documents, wherein when you upload them there is a "digital document to paged wikitext" script that runs and generates an appropriate result, which can then be imported elsewhere on the projects as needed.
Yes, something like this. I mean, if we want, as Wikisource, to start collecting born-digital text we should think something that does the bulk work.
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text?
Right - these should be doable by different people. An ambassador to an institutional repository should be able to collect approving signatures and do a bulk upload him/herself.
Yep. We should discover if signature should be needed: maybe, we could even download them without telling anyone, if they use compatible licenses (CC-BY, CC-BY-SA: I'm not sure about Berlin decalration and such).
And if Wikisource (or Commons) would have an OAI-PMH extension, we could directly harvest from repositories, on a montlhy basis. (but as we all know this point still needs much work) :-)
Aubrey
-- Sam.
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My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text?
I suspect the current population of scientists will need us to step in and perform all the roles of a journal publisher, thus allowing them to continue their workflow completely without any change to their own scientific work. If we're going to capture science publishing, we have to be MORE accommodating than the for-profit journals. So if a scientist's existing "upload" process is to just send it as an email attachment, or even god forbid to print it up and mail it to somebody, we need to be able to accommodate that with all the ease-of-use that their existing provider gives them.
Essentially, we need to steal somebody who runs one of the existing scientific journal companies (or one of their free alternatives) and get them to teach us and our computers how to do everything the professional journal companies are doing-- so that the scientists can then be free to just "swap" out their commercial publisher and switch straight to us without ANY changes.
Alec
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text?
I suspect the current population of scientists will need us to step in and perform all the roles of a journal publisher, thus allowing them to continue their workflow completely without any change to their own scientific work. If we're going to capture science publishing, we have to be MORE accommodating than the for-profit journals.
... we don't currently do traditional publishing, of journals, encyclopedias, photos, or anything else. It's not something we've developed expertise in doing. While it may be a valuable service, that would almost be another top-level Project or two.
On the other hand, PLoS (plos.org - the public library of science) is a great journal publisher that reviews and publishes scientific work under a free license. [They impose even fewer restrictions on reuse than Wikimedia, using CC-BY, which is a more appropriate license in my opinion for novel and scientific work.]
So at one level, we should simply support PLoS and amplify their visibility and effectiveness.
At another, we could serve as a public repository of works submitted to them.
if a scientist's existing "upload" process is to just send it as an email attachment, or even god forbid to print it up and mail it to somebody, we need to be able to accommodate that with all the ease-of-use that their existing provider gives them.
True; we should be improving ease of use for everyone.
SJ
On the other hand, PLoS (plos.org - the public library of science) is a great journal publisher that reviews and publishes scientific work under a free license. [They impose even fewer restrictions on reuse than Wikimedia, using CC-BY, which is a more appropriate license in my opinion for novel and scientific work.]
At the very least we should evangalise publishers such as this as a great place to look for specialist sources (for Wikipedia etc.); often I find myself limited to using paid-access sources and I always feel frustrated by this.
Free and open journals are awesome, and any opportunity to make use of them should be encouraged.
Tom
Phoebe created https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries , I suggest everyone interested in OA just join us there. I know is yet-another-list, but it will allow librarians from the outside to step in and join the conversation.
There are few threads in which we are basically discussing the same things, it should be good to merge them in the same place. (so I'll stop here and wait few days to post a reply in the new list :-)
Aubrey
2011/7/12 Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com
On the other hand, PLoS (plos.org - the public library of science) is a great journal publisher that reviews and publishes scientific work under a free license. [They impose even fewer restrictions on reuse than Wikimedia, using CC-BY, which is a more appropriate license in my opinion for novel and scientific work.]
At the very least we should evangalise publishers such as this as a great place to look for specialist sources (for Wikipedia etc.); often I find myself limited to using paid-access sources and I always feel frustrated by this.
Free and open journals are awesome, and any opportunity to make use of them should be encouraged.
Tom _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 07/12/11 11:16 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
It's not something we've developed expertise in doing. While it may be a valuable service, that would almost be another top-level Project or two.
On the other hand, PLoS (plos.org - the public library of science) is a great journal publisher that reviews and publishes scientific work under a free license. [They impose even fewer restrictions on reuse than Wikimedia, using CC-BY, which is a more appropriate license in my opinion for novel and scientific work.]
So at one level, we should simply support PLoS and amplify their visibility and effectiveness.
At another, we could serve as a public repository of works submitted to them.
I don't really object to hosting the kinds of papers under discussion, but at what point does the pursuit of such content become a monopolistic practice. Others should be hosting these too, even if it results in duplication and redundancy. We should even be encouraging researchers to publish elsewhere.first. To have that happen there needs to be more clarity in the reliable financing of open access sites in general.
There are consequences to being the big kid on the block. Rather than merely reflecting trends and attitudes we begin to lead them. With something as simple as alternative spellings, when we adopt the most common spelling based on our own quantitative analysis of Google usages we affect the future analysis by others because their analyses will include usages by Wikimedia and by those influenced by Wikimedia. Other natural processes which may have favoured the alternative are thwarted in their evolution.
Ray
On 07/09/11 2:06 PM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text? I clearly remeber the "Screw it" feeling I had the day after I graduated, meaning that I would not even touch my thesis again for the next months (and so it was).
If 5 more minutes of an author's time is too much for uploading a thesis that he has worked in for months or years that's his problem. He could even pay someone to upload for him. It suggests he doesn't have much faith in his own work. It's not our job to hold his hand.
Ray
2011/7/18 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net
On 07/09/11 2:06 PM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we
wikilibrarians
think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text? I clearly remeber the "Screw it" feeling I had the day after I graduated, meaning that I would not even touch my thesis again for the next months
(and
so it was).
If 5 more minutes of an author's time is too much for uploading a thesis that he has worked in for months or years that's his problem. He could even pay someone to upload for him. It suggests he doesn't have much faith in his own work. It's not our job to hold his hand.
I agree that 5 minutes are an acceptable time: what I wanted to say (probably my English is worse than what I think :-) is that "curation" of a thesis on Wikisource doesn't take 5 minutes, but even 5 hours. 5 hours and a lot of knowledge in Wikisource policies, mediawiki, templates and so on. I perfectly know that having your own thesis in wikitext on Wikisource is a good thing, but I don't honestly know if it is worth the labor.
Aubrey
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On 07/18/11 2:10 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
2011/7/18 Ray Saintongesaintonge@telus.net
On 07/09/11 2:06 PM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
My point (working in an academic digital library and just seeing the amount of thesis, dissertation, articles passing by) is that if for people is a difficult, overcomplicated burden to upload a PDF in an institutional repository (5 minutes of their time, even less), how can we wikilibrarians think that they will come to us and upload and "curate" their text? I clearly remeber the "Screw it" feeling I had the day after I graduated, meaning that I would not even touch my thesis again for the next months (and so it was).
If 5 more minutes of an author's time is too much for uploading a thesis that he has worked in for months or years that's his problem. He could even pay someone to upload for him. It suggests he doesn't have much faith in his own work. It's not our job to hold his hand.
I agree that 5 minutes are an acceptable time: what I wanted to say (probably my English is worse than what I think :-) is that "curation" of a thesis on Wikisource doesn't take 5 minutes, but even 5 hours. 5 hours and a lot of knowledge in Wikisource policies, mediawiki, templates and so on. I perfectly know that having your own thesis in wikitext on Wikisource is a good thing, but I don't honestly know if it is worth the labor.
Aubrey
I see that point. For the person who doesn't want to turn uploading his thesis to Wikisource into a career in itself, the rules that he needs to observe should be minimal. I still support the notion that it must have been previously published in an accessible and verifiable form, which need not be a Wikimedia project. For otherwise unpublished theses, the degree granting institution is probably the only one in a position to verify the official version. With theses that are first published in electronic form we have only the uploader's word that it is a true version. This is not even about dishonest uploaders, but about ones who believe that the uploaded version contains improvements on the original. Maybe the improvements really are that. but the ultimate reader needs to know what improvements were in fact made.
Policy wonks tend to give policies too much importance. Templates are often used to impose an unachievable perfection and uniformity on a text. A minimum is still necessary, but anything beyond the essential minimum must be justified by the person seeking to impose it in every circumstance.
Ray
Vaguely related: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data...
Aaron Swartz charged by federal prosecutors with illegally downloading over 4 million journal articles from JSTOR, with the intent to redistribute them via file-sharing networks.
On 19 July 2011 21:07, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Vaguely related: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data... Aaron Swartz charged by federal prosecutors with illegally downloading over 4 million journal articles from JSTOR, with the intent to redistribute them via file-sharing networks.
Closely related. I don't believe any detail of JSTOR's denials of involvement whatsoever. They're increasingly becoming a problem that needs dealing with.
So. What can we do to help take out the proprietary journal system?
- d.
2011/7/19 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
So. What can we do to help take out the proprietary journal system?
1. Openly support the OA movement, partecipating in conferences, making public statements, addressing the issue to the community. We discuss with them on the "interoperability" of the our movements, as to say we tell them using clear licenses (CC-BY) is *fundamental*. 2. Discuss about a technical framework for publicize OA papers in Wikipedia.
Couldn't we harvest OA articles from institutional and subject repositories, and even from OA journals, covering both green and Gold Open access? Couldn't we show dynamic lists of OA articles in the Reference sections of our Wikipedia articles, generated by keyword and language? All OA articles have these metadata in Dublin Core, it would be easy to filter them and create those dynamic lists.
(I'm not sure about a Wikipedia policy on "preferring" OA sources, it could conflict something else)
We could even bulk upload every article we find that is in CC-BY on Commons, to store it there (and when we find a solution for uploading them on Wikisource, we should do it too)(yes, we should need a metadata/OAI-PMH framework for us, but I don't think is such a big deal).
(these are just ideas, feel free to dump them :-)
Aubrey
On 07/20/11 12:47 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
2011/7/19 David Gerard<dgerard@gmail.com
So. What can we do to help take out the proprietary journal system?
- Openly support the OA movement, partecipating in conferences, making
public statements, addressing the issue to the community. We discuss with them on the "interoperability" of the our movements, as to say we tell them using clear licenses (CC-BY) is *fundamental*. 2. Discuss about a technical framework for publicize OA papers in Wikipedia.
Much of this has already been ongoing for some years. More important would be serious dialogue about the economic framework. What is the benefit to the author of having his article behind a pay wall?
Couldn't we harvest OA articles from institutional and subject repositories, and even from OA journals, covering both green and Gold Open access? Couldn't we show dynamic lists of OA articles in the Reference sections of our Wikipedia articles, generated by keyword and language? All OA articles have these metadata in Dublin Core, it would be easy to filter them and create those dynamic lists.
(I'm not sure about a Wikipedia policy on "preferring" OA sources, it could conflict something else)
For the user the important thing is what articles are best for supporting his interests and research. Choices based on political preference do not accomplish that. If the most suitable articles are only available for a fee, it is better to let him know beforehand than to suppress those links. The fact of the paywall needs to be a part of the reference along with the retail price for downloading a single article.
We could even bulk upload every article we find that is in CC-BY on Commons, to store it there (and when we find a solution for uploading them on Wikisource, we should do it too)(yes, we should need a metadata/OAI-PMH framework for us, but I don't think is such a big deal).
The subject is about Open Access, not about agrandizing Wikimedia. The right of Wikimedia to include this material is one thing, but that does not mean that hosting all the stuff within our legal entitlements is beneficial. Even what is already clearly in the public domain in all jurisdictions would be overwhelming to try to host.
Undermining the relationships between authors and pay hosts would be a good beginning. What is the nature of the contracts between authors and hosts? That may require dealing directly with authors, and that is a lot of work. At other times it may require taking a stand and playing hardball in the face of legal threats. Don't wait for a larger organization (like Wikimedia) to accept your responsibility; that changes the dynamics far too much. Large organizations have too many other assets that can be put at risk by an ill-advised legal conflict.
Ray
On 19 July 2011 21:48, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 19 July 2011 21:07, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Vaguely related: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data... Aaron Swartz charged by federal prosecutors with illegally downloading over 4 million journal articles from JSTOR, with the intent to redistribute them via file-sharing networks.
Closely related. I don't believe any detail of JSTOR's denials of involvement whatsoever. They're increasingly becoming a problem that needs dealing with.
Demand Progress seem to be fairly clear that JSTOR were not the driving force behind the prosecution, and I'd hope they'd know!
http://demandprogress.org/aaron
"...JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute."
(I have always vaguely wondered how many cases like this there are - a slapped wrist and request not to do it again by the publishers. You'd think there'd be a couple of dozen cases every year, though I guess by their nature it's quite discreet.)
But in more general terms, why do you specifically feel JSTOR are a problem needing dealt with? They do a lot of things right with their repository that more conventional academic publishers often do badly, in my experience. (In no particular order: retroactive access for withdrawn journals; on-site access; corpus research data; subsidised access in the developing world; transparent pricing; etc, etc.)
The basic issue of gated access to scholarly research, yes, that's an issue. But it's a pretty fundamental issue to the sector - it's tied up with the whole business model of how we publish academic work - not a quirk of this one organisation for which they specifically need punished. Are there some particularly egregious bits of past behaviour I've missed?
On 20 July 2011 17:54, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
But in more general terms, why do you specifically feel JSTOR are a problem needing dealt with? They do a lot of things right with their
Game-theoretic considerations: 1. to discourage others (this is quite important) 2. to discourage JSTOR, because even attempting to withdraw themselves from this one they benefit. (And their press release seems to be quite aware of the game-theoretic considerations too, which is why they're distancing themselves as fast as possible.) I'm still working it out.
- d.
On 07/07/11 12:00 AM, Ting Chen wrote:
On de.wikisource.org they scan every page of the original text, upload the scan on Commons and show the scan on the right part of every page as an image. It is even obligatory to have the original scan of the text.
The following page is an example: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Seite:Oberamt_Tettnang_231.jpg (I just hit the random page)
This is, of course, excessive. On the one hand it is a continuing virtue to have reliable proofread texts, but it should be sufficient to be able to link to such a text somewhere without necessarily including a copy. Whether one, two or three people have verified a text can indeed be shown in the metadata, and that becomes a basis for a user to judge reliability. Imposing stringent requirements will also discourage having other editions of the same work.
The one place where we can provide the greatest value-added is in linking the material in ways that it will become useful.
Ray
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 11:42 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 6 July 2011 21:29, Arlen Beiler arlenbee@gmail.com wrote:
Once it is published, can't it just go to Wikisource? Or would it have to be CC-By or something like that. If so, Wikisource would still be the best suited for that, we would just have to put it in a journal namespace or something along that line.
Remember that en:wp's "no original research" rule was invented for physics cranks. And even with fairly light moderation, arXiv features some spectacularly gibbering [[green ink]]. This will need some thought to create something that's actually useful to anyone, anywhere, ever.
- d.
Not entirely true. In the very early days, we had a quite considerable contingent of cranks pushing novel interpretations of history or literatrary theory etc. The problem there is that in those cases it wasn't blindingly obvious that they were cranks, because they tended to be discursive geniuses, in the genuine sense, rather than dribbling idiots like the physics cranks. And then there those who straddled both worlds, like the 'pataphysiscs loonies.
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 09:12:09PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Publisher-Steps-Up/128031/
People are exchanging and selling access to the databases to get the damn science.
This is why we need to keep pushing the free content and open access message. You cannot do science in a system with these effects.
Might be a good point in time to point out "right to read" to those who haven't read it yet?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
sincerely, Kim Bruning
On the subject of organisations that attempt to enclose the public domain: Do we have the proceedings of the Royal Society 1600-1923 on Wikimedia servers, as we quite definitely should? What's in progress along these lines?
- d.
On 07/21/11 8:19 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On the subject of organisations that attempt to enclose the public domain: Do we have the proceedings of the Royal Society 1600-1923 on Wikimedia servers, as we quite definitely should? What's in progress along these lines?
There's a tiny handful of these in Wikisource. ... It's a lot of work.
Ray
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
On 07/21/11 8:19 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On the subject of organisations that attempt to enclose the public domain: Do we have the proceedings of the Royal Society 1600-1923 on Wikimedia servers, as we quite definitely should? What's in progress along these lines?
There's a tiny handful of these in Wikisource. ... It's a lot of work.
Ray
The inaugural issue at least is available at PG. (helped proofread it at Distributed Proofreaders; and fun it was too)
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
On 07/21/11 8:19 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On the subject of organisations that attempt to enclose the public domain: Do we have the proceedings of the Royal Society 1600-1923 on Wikimedia servers, as we quite definitely should? What's in progress along these lines?
There's a tiny handful of these in Wikisource. ... It's a lot of work.
Ray
The inaugural issue at least is available at PG. (helped proofread it at Distributed Proofreaders; and fun it was too)
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
Actually,
http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-journal-content
Although the terms and conditions are somewhat restrictive.
Fred
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