To me, the boundary between interface in content is actually quite sharp. Imagine that all the world’s scientific information is in a huge database, perfectly organized and tagged with every bit of metadata you could imagine. Furthermore, imagine that any new information (comments, simplified proofs, etc) is automatically added to that database. That’s the content (+metadata).

The interface is how you make this content available to the world. If the database is online but people have to write their own SQL queries to get information, well, that counts as an interface (but not a very good one). On the other end of the scale, if the interface is so smart that it allows an inexperienced reader to find whatever he or she wants, then automatically suggests all the relevant content, explanations, etc., that would be a great interface. There’s no difference in content between these two interface scenarios, but they’re worlds apart in usefulness.

That said, I can understand how content and interface get intertwined. Right now, the interface we have uses PDF (essentially digital paper) as a major component, and this is so restrictive that it actually discourages authors from submitting all the content they might otherwise make available. If I have an easily-understandable proof of something, but it’s too long for PRL’s page limit, then the only thing that gets published is some indecipherable condensed mess. It’s a real shame that our current publication model actually rewards authors for degrading the readability of their work. Imagine if PRL had no page limit, but required authors to submit a 2 – 4 page extended abstract if their work was long. Even better, authors could just submit one long paper, with large chunks tagged as “supplemental” –experts who just wanted to skim could set their browsers to skip the supplemental material, while those who wanted more depth could get it. The tags could even be more specific–allowing authors to tag explanations and definitions that would only be useful to novices in one way, and details that only experts would care about in another way. All this tagging (the author-side interface) could probably be done with a few minor tweaks to RevTeX.

Getting back to your example of a simplified proof of an old theorem, I see this as new content. Providing readers viewing the old theorem with a link to the simpler proof is interface. Metadata is what lets your database realize the relevance of the new proof to the old theorem.

It occurred to me that you can build such a database without involving yourself much in the publication process (this is what Google does). If it were me pursuing this project, I’d be thinking about building a science search engine rather than starting a new journal. For one, starting even just a “conventional” journal requires a heck of a lot of work, and most of that work does nothing to advance your goals. Another issue is that if you start a journal, you can only help one specific field, whereas a search engine can quickly be expanded to cover all areas of science.

Some key issues with building a science search engine:

1) In order to succeed, you have to do a better job than anything else that’s out there. The baseline is Google.

2) Everyone talks about “semantic search” (searching websites using metadata provided by the sites themselves), but none of the major search engines do it because it suffers from a fatal flaw: site owners have too many incentives to provide bad metadata to game the system and drive hits to their sites. Fortunately, this problem is nearly non-existent for scientific search, since authors have no incentive to provide bad metadata. Semantic search is how you can beat Google in providing useful search results.

3) To make semantic search work, you need there to be at least one (and hopefully not too many) well-defined formats for the metadata. The Open Archives Initiative (which arXiv.org participates in) is a good start, but you’ll need more than that. Develop an open standard for the metadata you need, and convince a few big journals to adopt it.

4) So far, this addresses primary publication, but not things like comments, links to relevant papers, etc. That can all be added on to the search engine structure–when users click a link in the search results, they get the paper, but also a listing of other relevant papers, comments other users have posted, etc.

5) Don’t be afraid to sell advertising to make money from the site. The targeted nature of the sight means it can deliver high-value ads (e.g., if I’m looking at a paper on building high-power UV lasers, I might just want to buy one instead), and advertisers pay a lot for that. If you don’t want to go the route of a for-profit company, donate the money to funding science education or open access journals or whatever. Perhaps you could even share the advertising revenue with journals in return for them providing free full access to their content.

This may all sound daunting, but it’s doable. Some friends of mine recently started a search engine for electronics parts (an idea born from the years of frustration that come from being grad students trying to find parts for experiments). Their site is octopart.com — you might want to get in touch with them to see what they’ve learned from their experiences.

With regards to your comment/question about “interface” vs “content”… i think i understand this in much the same way i understand “manifold” and “[its] boundary”: intrinsically, it can be quite hard to tell these things apart… until one comes up with the appropriate tool, e.g., Differential Geometry [that will make intrinsic measurements].

Here it is, more explicitly: “boundaries” determine ‘global’ aspects, while the ‘manifold’ itself determines ‘local’ aspects.

So, while you’re correct in saying that it’s hard to see the difference between ‘interface’ and ‘content’, manifold and boundary; just like the boundary of a manifold determines its global structure, the interface of this project will determine the “global” properties of the content that can be delivered.

See, in a clear way, the arXivs already had to go through some “interface” changes: not only the numbering itself, but the intrinsic metadata and the addition of trackbacks and such (e.g., RSS).

So, this is a very nontrivial issue, for we (as humans) are not usually comfortable thinking in ‘global’ terms.

[]’s!

I just want to violently disagree with two of your points: “All of this is obvious and stuff you already know, of course,” and “my post… sounds kind of arrogant… I’m sure you already have all this figured out”

I hope you don’t object to my disagreement!

First of all, I think your first post is precisely correct, and I can’t improve on “What you’re looking to do is re-invent the interface to scientific knowledge.” I believe that the interface is hugely important.

Your post provides (at the very least) a new interface, by refactoring the issue as [publish] x [metadata] x [organize] x [reward]. This is already causing new synapses to fire in my head. I appreciate that!!

If I had this all figured out, or knew somebody who did, I’d be holed up in my basement making it happen. Instead, I’m stirring up discussion in the hopes of eliciting thought processes exactly like that one.

BTW, one final comment. How can/should we describe the boundary between “interface” and “content”? It’s not sharp. A new, simplified proof of an old theorem is acknowledged to be worthy… and review articles are generally highly valued. I wonder whether there _is_ a boundary! After all, programs are data too…

Here’s something that i forgot to put in my comment above… and have forgotten another couple of times that i’ve remembered it: Toward a Higher-Dimensional Wiki and What might an expository mathematical wiki be like?.

I think that both of these posts have intrinsic and interesting overlaps with this discussion we’re having here.

Besides, Travis mentioned metadata above… i can’t stress how important this is… but i’m sure we’re all aware of this.

[]’s!

1) Publish information.
By “publish”, I mean the minimal sense–just making it publicly available in some form. “Real” journals don’t do this any more than does the arXiv or even just uploading a PDF to a webpage.

2) Provide metadata.
Journals provide all sorts of metadata, from the explicit (author, date of submission, etc), to the implicit (the referees’ seal of approval).

3) Organize information.
Just by having different journals for different fields, journals help organize information. Citations serve as a medieval form of hyperlinking. Finally, most journals now offer online search facilities.

To this, we can add a fourth implicit purpose:

4) Reward authors via bolstered reputations

All of this is obvious and stuff you already know, of course, but I think it’s helpful to sort it out like this.

As far as I understand it, you project seeks to change relatively little about the nature of points 1, 2, and 4. Sure, authors may be able to provide a little more information because it can be better organized, but that’s not the big difference.

What you’re looking to do is re-invent the interface to scientific knowledge.

As we all know, Google often doesn’t do a very good job at finding scientific knowledge in an organized and complete manner, because it’s not smart enough to really understand scientific citations (keyword proximity doesn’t cut it). Wikipedia is often a good source for introductory material, but by design is not a primary reference. Plenty of systems exist for making discussion forums (such as this one), but they’re not adapted for discussing and augmenting scientific papers.

Your goal might be accomplished by starting a new kind of journal, or you might solve it by creating a specialized search engine that allows user participation (this is the direction SciRate is going). I don’t know, but I bet the winner will be whoever provides the most functional and efficient interface.

I’m a bit ‘constrained’ in my time lately… so, i figured i’d do a ‘core dump’ of what i believe i have to say and read the comments later. I know, not exactly a good practice, not my habit either… but, it’s the best i can do right now; so i apologize before hand if i repeat some of the comments already made.

Also, as opposed to praxis, i’ll put some references in the very beginning… for a reason: in this particular case i think we need more contextualizing then “referencing”; and that’s my point in putting them forth right away: if people can skim through them, it’s already good enough… maybe they’ll catch bits’n pieces of my line of reasoning this way (though i hope to make things clear as i continue this comment, below).

So, there you have it (alphabetical order): ccLearn, Connotea, Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It’s a Seductive Mirage, Directory of Open Access Journals, Free Culture Movement, Free Software/Free Science, Open Science or Free Science, Saving Academia from Market Enclosure, Scholarpedia, Science Commons, SciRate, The Academic Reader, href=”http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/10/the_future_of_s_1.html”>The Future of Science is Open, Part 1: Open Access, The Future of Science is Open, Part 2: Open Science, The Future of Science is Open, Part 3: An Open Science World, The New Science of Sharing, Zotero. If you guys read portuguese (pt_BR), i wrote an article for a brazilian magazine that could be interesting, Democracia e Acesso Livre ao Conhecimento (Democracy and Free Access to Knowledge). Not-so-loosely-related to these links, i keep a list of “Science 2.0″ links on my blog (check on the right-hand-side, under “Science 2.0″). And, to sum up this reference list, here are the last ones: Transforming XHTML to LaTeX and BibTeX, XML, XSL and TeX: Room for Cooperation and DocBook to LaTeX XSL stylesheets.

I hope that, with this set of links, my general point is somewhat clear… but, let me put it in writing, just in case.

I believe, as some other folks also do, that we’re at a cross-roads right now, and here’s the reason: The Free Software movement has brought forward a “revolution” in thought, and it did so using a very simple principle, “freedom”. See, Computer Science was the first arena where the distance between “science” and “technology” singularly collapsed; here’s an example: If you were a graph theorist many moons ago, you were considered nothing but a ‘pure mathematician’ with very little practial use for society. Then, with the advent of the Internet and the massive connection of people worldwide… all of a sudden, this graph theorist became übber-important: He can cook up a webbrowser overnight!

Hiperboles aside, i’m sure you understand what i mean: our society has always paid dues to ‘technology’, to artifacts that can actually perform some task — and “Science” hardly fits this profile, hence the centuries-long difficulty in funding [basic] science and research. Now, after the Internet has showed us, the society as a whole, a brand new world… we are coming to the realization that this brand new world intrinsically needs [basic] research… for the distance between Science and technology just shrank [to a point] in this new “computer age” of ours. That is, a Lattice QCD physicist, now, can be quite an important player on the development of a new supercomputer and new hardware at large… but — and here’s the trick! — nowadays society is ready to “understand” and assimilate what this means… and it’s also ready to value it accordingly. This is the revolution: the networking, connecting and “socializing” that the first MULTIX/UNIX systems provided for some has now been raised into another plainfield: That’s what the Inernet provided by connecting people together — now society knows that it can harness the ‘collective creative power’ via the ‘Net!

In fact, this is clear to me in this “Web 2.0″ wave: the “power of the collective creativity” funneled via technology into “Social News” and sharing of all kinds! (This was the basic idea behind MULTIX/UNIX; so, in this sense, Web2.0 is nothing but “UNIX on the Internet”.) And here’s where i’ll close this first argument, in a circle: What the Free Software movement brought forward was the concept of freely sharing ideas! And this has been the actual power of the ‘Net since it’s inception. However, the important thing to note is that this idea of “sharing freely” is nothing new for Science and Scientists: Without freely sharing our ideas, we simply do not move forward! I don’t care how much people believe in the fairytail of the ‘lonely genius’, this is absolutely NOT the most frequent case, nor is it the most pleasurable. The creative power of our science is inherently collective… science is a “team work”, it’s a “contact sport”!

These are my reasons to think that we’re sitting on a critical point in time: all of our previous [mis]conceptions about “value” will have to change in order for us to move forward, as humans. The “distance” between Science and technology is not what it once was… in this new era of ours, it will be increasingly more difficult to attach ‘value’ to technology without realizing the true value of Science.

Having said that, we must realize one thing within our own community, the scientific one: Among our values, one of the most basic ones is freedom. Freedom of information, freedom of sharing, freedom of collaboration, freedom of access, etc, etc, etc. Even during the ‘Cold War’ years we had collaborations between Russian and American scientists! Sure it could have been better and more intensily harnessed… but, my point is that even with all of the difficulties that were presented at that time, Science still needed “freedom” in order to move on.

The same is true now: We need freedom to access papers, to read them, to access [raw] data, algorithms, to communicate with our peers and expose our ideas! And it is in this last one that the problem with “publishing” comes in.

I’m sure that, by now, we’ve all heard the stories about the magazines “Topology” and “K-Theory”, among the problems with publishing in the Physics world. Otherwise, John Baez has a good summary (besides, Google is always your friend): What We Can Do About Science Journals.

What i mean by all of this is the following: This whole shebang is a paradigm shift. And, as such, there will be many non-trivial hurdles ahead, so we need to have pretty concrete and robust ideas and values in our minds… otherwise, we’re doomed to fail from the get go. These things have to be clear in our heads so we can properly position ourselves and plan our tactics and strategies accordingly. “It’s always good to know what you’re doing.” It’s the analogous to knowing the answer before you start calculating… We’re not gonna go to battle to loose… at least we should put up an honorable fight.

As for the ideas you presented on your post, i agree: we really need to reform our current ways. The ways to do it are many, but i think it’s essential to recognize one simple fact: whatever these new ways may be, i’ll bet that they’ll all ‘harness the power of the collective creativity’. Be it in Wiki form (distributed editing, commentaries), be it in Modular Content form (different experts writing “core documents” about their area of expertise), and so on. Note that technologies like Connotea and Zotero (both linked above) already do this. (Also, there’s a PDF Reader for the Mac that allows you to comment on your PDF files! It’s like putting post-its all over your PDF — no different than Zotero…)

This has clear problems, the signal-to-noise ratio being the one that more quickly jumps to the eyes. Minimizing the noise will be a behemoth by itself… maximing the signal is a whole different ballgame altogether!

But, in this sense, i think that a scheme like that of Scholarpedia (linked above) can come in quite handy. Their modus operandi can be quite easily generalized.

And, to finish this comment, let me bring XSL to attention (with its appropriate links above): Note that we can translate HTML, XHTML, XML, etc, all into LaTeX (and, thus, PS or PDF) using XSL’s! This is quite a feat to my mind. Imagine this: you can have your articles in any format you so desire, for it can be readily converted into any other format easily with the touch of a button. This is sexy!

So, here are my quite preliminary views on this topic. I apologize for not having read the previous comments, and also if i went past the ‘polite’ length that a comment should have. But, after all talk and all, i felt i had to make a ‘core dump’.

[]’s!

One more thing, which I forgot to mention. You wrote, “Do you think that authors will actually be so possessive of their own work that they will balk at anyone making derived or edited articles (and disregard all the times that they have probably wanted to do the same themselves)?”

Honestly, I do think they will — and I’m definitely somewhat sympathetic. Your “improvement” to my work might (from my perspective) be a fatal mistake, or worse. Consider all the concluding paragraphs that say (basically), “This paper conclusively demonstrates that our theory rocks, blah blah”, and consider how the authors might react to a modified concluding paragraph that reads “This paper demonstrates that our theory, while successful in certain areas, has critical limitations…” Frankly, I can think of several papers where I’d like to do exactly that — but I don’t labor under the illusion that the authors would approve!

The Open Source movement in software is a tempting (and sometimes useful) role model, but there are some bedrock differences between code (which is really defined by what it DOES) and publication (which is partially literature/art).

Finally, regarding “and disregard all the times that they have probably wanted to do the same themselves”… just to play devil’s advocate, I’ll point out that I occasionally want to hit certain people very hard — but I’m quite glad to live in a society in which neither I nor other people are allowed to do so. We need a better argument for the right to edit other people’s papers than “everybody wants to,” because Western legal philosophy holds (in general) that your freedom of action is trumped by my freedom not to be acted upon.

I’m glad you’re enthusiastic about the idea! There’s definitely an argument for leaping in with both feet. As John Wheeler said, “Start ‘er up, and see why she don’t run!”

However, there’s also a strong argument — especially in anything related to academia — for planning wisely. We’re not precisely operating in the real world here; the markets and incentive structures are murky and sometimes counter-intuitive. I do not want to alienate large parts of the community by leaping before I look!

Case in point: I mentioned Wikipedia because it demonstrates several terrific features. However, I don’t think Wikipedia is a good model for scientific publication! Permanence (of articles), authoritativeness (of stated facts), and credit (to authors) are really important, and I think the Wiki model is unsuited to doing this right. For this (and a few other) reasons, I don’t want to just fire up a wiki and start soliciting contributions.

In short, I think we need to do some serious and intense thinking about the key features of the ideal system — and then, relatively quickly, start trying to build it. There’s a happy medium between going off half-cocked and overthinking. I don’t want to start building something before I know what the foundation is, because then I’ll realize that it has to be torn down and restarted.

A couple of specific responses:
1. “Wiki-style publishing does not have to be incompatible with publishing in journals.” As I mentioned above, I don’t think a wiki is the right foundation. Also, I don’t think that this “parallel publishing” model is sustainable, because authors do twice the work for less than twice the credit. I’d rather integrate with the current system — i.e., by allowing publications in a new format that exist on equal footing with existing journal publications.

2. “[I]f you have contributed something to a wiki, and it is substantial enough to warrant a journal publication, then it should be fairly easy to convert it to a journal article.” This is a really good point. I’d like to take it further — I’d like to minimize the divide between collaboration and publication. I’d like to use one tool for collaboration, note-taking, and scratchwork AND for publication… so that publication becomes a matter of changing the permissions on a subset of your notes. But that’s a topic for a different day!

3. “We don’t need to hit an optimum solution right away (the first web search engines in the early 90s were enormously important to making the www useful, even though nobody uses them anymore.” It’s an appealing analogy, but there’s a difference. The first search engines were filling an empty niche. Bad search was better than no search. Here, there is an existing system. A publication system has to be _clearly_ better than the existing system to motivate folks to switch.

4. “[W]ouldn’t it be better to do this by just providing a permalink or other kind of permanent reference…then let anyone who so wishes go ahead and edit or add to it right away…?” This is the germ of a solution, but there are important conflicts to be resolved. If you put the original version on your CV, but 2 years later the most popular “front page” version of a paper is substantially different, how do we deal with that? If Alice makes a few changes to Bob’s paper, changing the conclusions so that Bob doesn’t agree with them, whose name goes on the paper? There are a few hundred other similar scenarios to be foreseen and dealt with… which is why I’m loathe to leap before I look.

And — of course — _this_ is part of the discussion that will (hopefully) enable a new system. So, thanks! and keep critiquing!