[OWW-SC] OWW Publishing with arXiv.org

[Julius B. Lucks]

The only thing that really has to be facilitated is the endorsement  
system for new arXiv users.  The current procedure is that if you are  
not an endorser yourself, you need to be endorsed by several  
endorsers.  I will talk to Paul Ginsparg about this and ask if we  
could at least seed the system with a few endorsers from OWW to start  
the chain going.

The advantage to going with the arXiv with respect to rolling out  
something ourselves is that:

1.) The arXiv has been around since 1991 and they are very good at  
what they do.  They also are supported by Cornell, and will be around  
for a long time to come.  They also have huge recognition within the  
open access community, and are unaffiliated with publishers.

2.) Having worked at the arXiv, it is actually a complicated beast  
beneath the surface.  I don't think we would want to get into this  
arena quite yet.  We can always try things out on the arXiv, and if  
it is a real hit and the arXiv does not provide the flexibility we  
want, we can make our own system and import our old arXiv postings.

And one more previous point I forgot to add on the previous list:

7.) There are a bunch of 'overlay' journals built on top of the arXiv  
already.  Basically editors use the arXiv as their whole submission  
system, put papers through peer review of some sort, then create  
their journal as a series of links to arXiv posts.  It would be  
completely natural for OWW to create something like this if we ever  
wanted to get into the publishing arena ourselves.  There is a lot of  
flexibility with this.

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On Oct 31, 2007, at 11:15 AM, Drew Endy wrote:

> I think that this is a good idea.  Either we need to do this, or  
> something equivalent ourselves.  Drew
>
>
> On Oct 31, 2007, at 11:04 AM, Julius B. Lucks wrote:
>
>> Hi Bill and John (and SC),
>>
>> I just had this idea so please excuse its half-bakedness.  What about
>> promoting 'publishing' of oww materials on arXiv.org?
>>
>> arXiv.org already has a quantitative biology section (http://
>> arxiv.org/list/q-bio/new), and I am willing to bet that essentially
>> all papers coming out of the OWW community could fit into this
>> section.  The arXiv allows you to post paper pre-prints online for
>> free, and it is completely open access.  Every e-print has associated
>> with it a unique id, that is completely referenceable in papers,
>> etc.  In addition, if you do publish your paper in a journal, you can
>> update arXiv e-print metadata with the journal reference, or a DOI of
>> the journal article.
>>
>> Compared to an alliance with Nature or some other body, promoting
>> 'publishing' on the arXiv has many advantages:
>>
>> 1.) It already exists and no agreement or negotiations need to be
>> made to use it.  There is a very mild form of control in that people
>> that are new to the arXiv system must be 'endorsed' by existing
>> people, but this can be gotten around until enough OWW people are
>> themselves endorsers.
>>
>> 2.) It provides all the functionality we want - some sort of official
>> stamp on an OWW document in the form of an e-print that is completely
>> referenceable and is more like a paper than a wiki page.  In fact,
>> the arXiv supports the notion of versions, so that you can always
>> submit a newer version of a resource, keeping complete access to
>> older versions.
>>
>> 3.) There are many tools already in place, or being developed that we
>> can integrate the arXiv with OWW.  As Bill knows, the arXiv already
>> has an API that allows you to pull content from the arXiv into OWW
>> trivially (by just specifying e-print id).  In addition, this API
>> supplies journal references and DOI's if they are present, so it
>> would be very easy to create references in the biblio extension for
>> both the e-print and the published version.  Also, there is an ingest
>> API in active development (and soon to be released) with which we
>> could easily create our long-dreamed-of 'publish' button on OWW that
>> could automatically publish an OWW page.
>>
>> 4.) Journals will accept papers that have been posted on the arXiv
>> already.  In particular, Nature has committed to this as is evident
>> on the Nature Proceedings page (http://precedings.nature.com/
>> about#journal-submissions)
>>
>> "Nature Precedings hosts manuscripts that may be submitted to any
>> journal of any publisher. Nature and all Nature journals have a
>> policy that permits such posts on recognized pre- or e-print servers
>> such as Nature Precedings and arXiv without affecting their
>> eligibility for publication, whether or not such postings result in
>> discussion on other sites and in the media. We cannot take
>> responsibility for the possibility of scooping by competitors.
>> Authors submitting to other journals are advised to check their
>> policies about prior postings before sending manuscripts to Nature
>> Precedings."
>>
>> (In fact, Nature Precedings was heavily inspired by the arXiv.)
>>
>> 5.) If the quantitative biology community grows and needs more of a
>> refined categorization (such as synthetic biology, etc.), the arXiv
>> can expand its categorization scheme (which is how the q-bio section
>> started in the first place).
>>
>> 6.) Integrating with the arXiv integrates what OWW is doing with the
>> physics, math and computer science communities.
>>
>> This is juts a brainstorm, but it seems to me like the arXiv could
>> provide the avenue that we have been thinking about in the OWW
>> publishing arena.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Julius
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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>> Please Reply to My Permanent Address: julius at younglucks.com
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