Hi Peter,

A quick answer about designing your own social network, this is possible using tools such as phpfox for example. Phpfox is a CMS-based community social network engine that developers can use to create proprietary social networks. I developed one recently for one client and indeed it is extremely powerful.

The difference between phpfox and Ning is that you master everything . Ning is a hosting service for social communities, phpfox is a software so with phpfox you design and control just about everything.

I worked with phpfox so I know it is powerful though there exists other software ( php/jsp ) like this one. The only problem of phpfox is that it is hard and tedious to learn their 'meta-language' ( kind of social engine scripting ) based on the top of php.

Dear Martin,

I have been thinking about this question of 'brand' recently, because our Ning hosting company is currently redesigning the network system used by the Research Cooperative. The result may be better or worse for our purposes - we won't know until we have to make the transition in several months time.

This led me to think of what alternatives might exist for developing our network.

There are other social networking systems, but none that I like so much as the Ning system, which has been sweet for a non-coder like me.

The change we face also led me to fish around for alternative domain names. To my surprise, I found that the name "publishscience" was available for most domain name suffixes of interest.

On behalf of the Research Cooperative, I am now the proud owner of publishscience.org, publishscience.net, publishscience.info, and publishscience.co

I have started using "Publish science!" as an exhortation and slogan in the description area of our network (see top page). The slogan "Publish science!" is meant as an encourgement to publish meaningful intellectual work, of a scientific kind, in the broadest possible sense.

It might be useful to change the domain name for The Research Cooperative to publishscience.org, so that the domain name spells out the purpose of the network, and is complementary to the network name, rather than being redundant.

This might also be advantageous for the purposes of search engine optimisation.

What I would also like to do, gradually, is set up a Wordpress blogging site, using one of these domain names (most likely publishscience.info, or publishscience.net), in order to present biographies of publishers and publishing companies and start-ups.

Your efforts could be something to write about and promote in this way.

Good publishers often depend on the efforts of quite interesting people - which is why many publishing companies are named after their founders, I suppose.

Unfortunately, when companies outlive their namesakes, the names can easily become fronts for impersonal corporations.

It is curious that so many of the new online (virtual) publishers of journals have chosen to be anonymous. They seem to think that publishing is purely a mechanical process that does not require actual humans to communicate with each other, in order to establish trust and interest.

My impression is that you are trying to use mechanical processes to facilitate the essential human work of thinking and communicating.

A "Publish science!" blog could be used to establish a brand that is not specific to one publisher, and that supports publishers who value being:

knowable, personal, local, national, specialised

not:

anonymous, impersonal, international, global, universal

The former can of course be universal in terms of content value, while the later can be parochial even when claiming to be universal.

Please feel free to agree or disagree with any of the above. Whatever you think, I would like know what your thoughts are (reply privately, or in public, as you wish).

Best regards, Peter

--
Peter J. Matthews, Chief Admin.,
The Research Cooperative,
Auckland & Kyoto.

Contact: researchcooperative [at] gmail [dot] com

Hi peter, no I do not have the funds for such a team but the main point is that this team could be flexible ( freelancers/volunteers/etc...) and depend on each book project and also that I do not believe there would be any specifically way to make such a structure a viable commercial structure so this could be only in my mind a way to give a real professional alternative way to some science author to publish books.

Alsohonestlyhow many books in science are best sellers? really a very very few part of them so the whole idea would be to do everything at production price, meaning without benefits. Lulu allows to put a price which the price the books costs to be manufactured so the buyer would pay only for the production of the on-demand book which is now incredibly low.

The key point here is quality. Obviously producing a quality book as you mentioned takes time. Using a combination of freelancers, volunteers and the publishers and the online system this may be doable.

The freelancers will require payments for their tasks and the author should pay them directly, the platform will only allow the collaborative building of the book, step by step.

The key idea would be to create a brand, a bit like wikipedia did and in fact this may lead to more and more 'virtual' publishing.

I have seen someone in an exhibition from Springer-Verlag claiming they 'invented' on-demand printing ... 5 years after lulu started on the market...

Dear Martin,

This is precisely the kind of project that can be envisaged, using the Research Cooperative to seek out editors, illustrators and reviewers for a particular task.

I presume you do not have funds to actual employ a virtual in-house team of editors and copyeditors, or a secretary to manage correspondence with reviewers, and so on. Those are real costs for producing books with a certain level of readability, visual attractiveness, and quality of content.

A new approach could be to make all contributors to a book investors in the book: any income earned from a book could be allocated according to a transparent contract (i.e. all parties involved know what the other parties stand to earn, as a percentage, of the book). The contract could be made between the authors, editors, illustrators, and publisher.

Reviewers should be volunteers who have interest and/or experience in the subject, but who should not have a financial or reputational interest in making positive or negative comments that are not deserved.

I like your idea to make use of the existing Lulu infrastructure.

Best regards, Peter

--
Peter J. Matthews, Chief Admin.,
The Research Cooperative,
Auckland & Kyoto.

Contact: researchcooperative [at] gmail [dot] com

HI Everybody,

I am in the process of creating a virtual publishing house for technical and science books ( not papers ).

My idea would the be the following: creating a complete software , ideally made in java ( jsps + app server + database + backend ) allowing the production of a book from scratch to publication.

I would connect at the end the pdf to the lulu backend system ( http://www.lulu.com ) so that lulu would care about the manufacturing of the book, the ISBN registration and the diffusion of the books in the shops. Lulu have a complete API and have already automated the production level andhonestlytheir books are extremely well manufactured. ( so lulu would be the hardware and the virtual publishing house would be the software )

Needless to say that the idea would be to sell the books at affordable production price.

How could the people team up together to produce such books, what sort of budget would be involved and how freelancers could be involved .

I have started to work on a sketch of this project with a personal book I am writing (http://tpfa-answer-book.info/ ) and I created several php scripts with database and used a few collaboration tools together.

The software would allow creating a book project, moving it from different stepsuntilit reaches enough quality to be published.

I would be interested to know the comments about this project, if people thinks it would be valuable, etc...

I have a few experience dealing with some 'reputable' publishers and I came to the conclusion that they are just now using their image to sell 'prestige' and 'reputation' without caring about the interest of a given book or even about the quality of what's inside. I met a few 'madoff' inside these companies and I have the feeling that there will be more and more.

Obviously he who controls publishing of science, somewhat controls science so Springer-verlag SBM and pearson and a few others ( and there not many ) just controls science bycontrollingpublication of science.

Would this open virtual publishing system would be a good alternative?

With best regards,

Martin Rupp

updated by @martin-rupp: 21/06/17 01:16:09PM