...The current scientific publishing model has worked pretty well for centuries. However, it also has obvious problems. This first main problem is lack of free access, i.e. access to the published materials is mostly limited to paid-users. This problem is being addressed by the Open Access movement.
The second main problem with current publishing model is that publishing research paper is not an efficient way to share data. There are several reasons for this....
These inefficiencies really hamper data sharing and information discovery. So, new ways of publishing are needed in order to increase the efficiency of sharing research information. I think direct publishing of experiment data on the web presents a good solution....
Experiment data can be represented at different levels of granularity. Web2express.org is approaching the data sharing problem from the opposite end of the spectrum comparing to the bioscience projects like MGET. It’s developing shallow ontology to represent data across all scientific fields, such as life sciences, computer, social science, etc. Early version (v0.2) of SPE ontology for self-publishing of experiments is being reviewed within W3C HCLS interest group, and demo publishing tool is available online for testing and download.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/05/2006 09:31:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
