New practices for electronic publishing 2: New forms of the scientific paper

Abstract

I ntroductionIn the previous paper, 1 we critically discussed the main features of a scientific publication. We based this discussion on the report of an International Working Group. 2 We argued that this report is the near-final description of a scientific publication within the traditional document paradigm. The authors carefully touched on all the important intrinsic issues of a scientific communication and listed the requirements that electronic publications have to fulfil. In our discussion of this report, we extended the argument beyond print on paper, and this resulted in a series of concerns. It illustrated that the transformation of scientific information from paper to an electronic carrier is not a simple projection but implies a complete reconsideration of the way in which scholarly communications are produced and read.Below, the consequences of electronic preparation, handling, storage, retrieval, and reading are discussed, based on a model developed at the University of Amsterdam. Towards an understanding of electronic publicationsAs indicated in the previous paper, we need to appreciate the differences between traditional paper documents and electronic documents, in order to arrive at a full understanding and new guidelines for electronic publishing. This means that we have to abstract from the current accepted daily practice of scientific communication in order, first, to define socially and scientifically acceptable rules of conduct, and subsequently to apply them within the context of a new environment.The abstract notions of the International Working Group are, of course, correct overall; the problem is in the implementation. This implementation demands a better grasp of the nature of electronic documents. For

Enhanced Publications: Data Models and Information Systems

“…Typically, embedded parts are stored locally in the information system. The semantics of the relationships between the publication's narrative part and supplementary materi al is often "silent", although in some cases it may bear information about the type or the meaning of the files (Candela, Castelli, & Pagano, 2009a;Kircz, 2002). Figure 3 shows an example of an enhanced publication with embedded parts, where each part is accompanied by metadata descriptions.…”

“…Information systems of journals willing to offer this functionality usually adopt data models where supplementary materials are treated as embedded parts of the enhanced publication. Kircz (2002) proposes the "modular article" data model. A modular arti cle aggregates and connects with meaningful links several "modules" in order to create a coherent, self-contained, and complete unit describing a research.…”

A new paradigm for the scientific article

“…Priem/Hemminger [5] propose the idea of the "decoupled journal (DcJ)": "The DcJ brings publishing out of its current seventeenth-century paradigm, and creates a Weblike environment of loosely joined pieces -a marketplace of tools". Kircz [6] postulates the end of the traditional journal article.…”

Enhanced Publications : Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories

“…According to Kircz (1998;2002) data sets, images, sounds, simulations and videos are part of the publishing environment, next to text. However, these objects should preferably not be simply added to the traditional article, which is described as linear.…”

“…a data set in its basic form as a list of data, or conceived in a histogram. Each type of information unit should be well defined and therefore be endowed with different sets of metadata, each set describing a different aspect of the information entity (Kircz, 1998;2002).…”