
How To Publish a Scientific Comment in 123 Easy Steps - smokinn
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18773744/null
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designtofly
For those of you who dislike Scribd as much as I do, here's a direct link to
author's website and pdf:

[http://www.physics.gatech.edu/frog/How%20to%20Publish%20a%20...](http://www.physics.gatech.edu/frog/How%20to%20Publish%20a%20Comment%20w%20suggestions.pdf)

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devin
What's not to like about scribd? It seems to do the job just fine...

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Maro
Scribd is a step backwards. If they wanted to create value, they could HTMLify
PDFs (similar to the Gmail feature or the Google preview page) instead of
showing them in a stupid flash window.

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mingdingo
You just brought up a great idea. Google can do it, but on a limited basis. A
startup that could convert pdfs, word documents, and latex files directly to
HTML+CSS, with negligible loss of quality, would be MASSIVE.

Of course, this requires browsers to standardize, and step 0 is for IE6/IE7 to
disappear off the face of the earth. And if IE8 can't keep up with the other
browsers, then it should go too.

Seriously, what you propose would be super useful.

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reedlaw
What's wrong with PDF? It's an open standard and displays beautifully on
screen or in print. I can resize it to any size and it still renders perfectly
(except for embedded bitmaps of course). I'd much rather read a book in PDF
format on my screen then have to hope that a website renders properly at a
size that is comfortable for reading.

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cbr
The main downsides to PDF are that it is not supported in all browsers,
especially mobile or embedded ones and even in the browsers where it is
supported, it is implemented as a plugin and so is slow to load.

PDFs open in 3sec on this computer. That seems small, but html+css pages open
almost instantly.

There are lots of nice things about PDF, but when almost everything else I'm
viewing is html+css it's unpleasant.

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JulianMorrison
I truly don't understand why academics put up with journals. If I were in the
biz, I'd be organizing a torches-and-pitchforks mob to burn them down and
replace them with arXiv, personal websites, and peer review panels who link to
good papers.

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bbgm
Because that's not how you get funded. Your funding/tenure, etc are related to
where you publish, how often you publish, etc. It's a systemic issue, a system
designed for a different era which just does not translate to today's science

~~~
JulianMorrison
So in my proposed system "publish" maps exactly to "get linked by this or that
prestigious review panel".

Everyone who replied me seems to have missed that. Basically, review panels
become journals turned inside out. They don't host the content, but they do
certify it.

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bentoner
But is there really a difference then? Hosting the content is a tiny
proportion of the work involved in running a journal.

If you're going to go through all the effort required to peer-review and
certify work, why wouldn't you also throw up a website and collect the papers
you certify?

~~~
JulianMorrison
A larger part is deciding what _not_ to host, given the crazy old-fashioned
notion that journals ought also to have dead-tree versions, and therefore each
paper costs them quite a lot for a small print run.

Why would actual science come in neat magazine-sized packets? It's obvious
they must be normalizing the signal, either by floating the cutoff or just
picking until the slots are full and trashing the rest.

A review panel that doesn't have to pay some company to stamp ink onto wood
pulp can afford to link as many, or as few good papers as arrive. And, they
can afford to do this asynchronously, as soon as they arrive.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Depressingly close to my experience, and one of the reasons I left academia,
despite significant offers to stay.

I long for the day when collaborative media allow multiple authors to converge
on an agreed paper. Those that disagree can converge on an alternative paper,
and readers can see for themselves the data, reasoning and conclusions.

I won't see it - it won't happen in my lifetime.

~~~
bbgm
It just might

<http://www.viddler.com/explore/CameronNeylon/videos/9/>

<http://www.viddler.com/explore/CameronNeylon/videos/8/>

These are related to sessions at Science Online London held over the last few
days. Of course as Cameron notes, there are still significant challenges

[http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2009/08/23/refl...](http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2009/08/23/reflecting-
on-a-wave-the-demo-at-science-online-london-2009/)

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RiderOfGiraffes
The problem isn't really the technology - the problem is the egos and the
assignment of credit. It has been said that it's remarkable what can be
accomplished if you don't care who gets the credit, but getting the credit is
critical to the continuing employment of academics.

Solve that with technology and you've got a winner.

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jacquesm
> \- the problem is the egos and the assignment of credit.

Yep. I'm not in academia, my prior education level precludes me but I dated a
lady who was and over the years I have come to simply loathe the infighting
and politics that academia has become mired in.

I really wonder how many good or maybe even great scientists leave academia
because they're sick and tired of the whole spiel to find a job in some
company somewhere.

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Robin_Message
I'm studying for a PhD at Cambridge, UK, and I'm seriously interested in
fixing this. Well, maybe fixing the whole thing is too big, but I'd like to
try :-)

Anyone know of anything worth getting involved with? Anyone want to work on an
alternative to journals?

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jvdh
One thing you really should at least do is retain the copyright of your own
paper. Journals will allow you to retain copyright and almost all rights of
your paper if you just ask for it.

Then you can always publish it on your homepage.

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nkurz
While this may be true in your field, my impression is that this isn't true in
general. Can you offer specific evidence? Here's a page offering a different
view: <http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/jono/item/toc.html>

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jvdh
Elsevier sends you a draconian form by default. If you tell them that you're a
PhD student and want to retain copyright and later publish your article in
your thesis, then they will send you a new form. That form lets you keep the
copyright, keep the right to publish this on your homepage, keep the right to
publish this later on paper, et cetera. It takes some courage, some pushing
and patience, but you will get it.

This is one of my papers, note that it explicitly says on the webpage that I
have the copyright: <http://bit.ly/PBKqx>

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Eliezer
I begin to think that it would be easier to burn the universities to the
ground and start over.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
you aren't back to reading moldbug are you? :p

anytime an organization transitions from accomplishing its original goal to a
jobs program there's no going back. you have to start over.

------
Create
_All data and parameters associated with any open publication should be
available to anyone interested in it._

This will be fun for all LHC results; nobody can [or is willing for that
matter] read, let alone truly(!) interpret LEP data anymore.

