[OWW-SC] OWW Publishing with arXiv.org

Julius B. Lucks julius at younglucks.com
Wed Oct 31 11:52:30 EDT 2007 

I agree that we should have a conversation.  The arXiv is pretty  
hands off in general, and various communities have built resources  
around the arXiv as the communities have seen fit.  But it would be  
good to talk about it so the arXiv has some ideas of our plans.

I am happy to write Paul Ginsparg an email, or chat with him in  
person about this.  I'll do this informally at first, and suggest a  
conference call with OWW board/steering committee members.

How does this sound?

Julius

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On Oct 31, 2007, at 11:30 AM, Drew Endy wrote:

> 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.
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ------------------
>> Please Reply to My Permanent Address: julius at younglucks.com
>> http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/User:Julius_B._Lucks
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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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>>> -----
>>>> ---------------
>>>> Please Reply to My Permanent Address: julius at younglucks.com
>>>> http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/User:Julius_B._Lucks
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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>>>> ----------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>

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