[OWW-SC] OWW Publishing with arXiv.org

[Drew Endy]

We would need to have a conversation with arXiv leadership before  
making a decision.


On Oct 31, 2007, at 11:26 AM, Julius B. Lucks wrote:

> 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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>>>
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>>
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