[OWW-SC] OWW Publishing with arXiv.org

Julius B. Lucks julius at younglucks.com
Wed Oct 31 16:37:52 EDT 2007 

Hi Drew,

I just spoke to Paul Ginsparg and he said it makes perfect sense.   
There is not even an endorsement issue if the e-prints are submitted  
with email addresses from academic institutions.

So it is really up to the OWW community as to how best use arXiv as a  
resource.

Cheers,

Julius


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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