Dear Martin,

Here are some further thoughts for you...

The key requirement for any good publication is the effort and skill of the people who do the writing, editing, illustration, indexing, review, and layout. This requires people hunting and coordination, and that historically has been the main service provided by good publishers.

There are already generic collaboration tools available online (even for Google Docs) for example, but I haven't seen anything dedicated to scientific publishing, which has rather more diverse and complex requirements than business or fiction writing. So that is one way your effort can distinguish itself from others.

The other way would be distinct if it can integrate with a range of team building services, of which the Research Cooperative is but one example. I am familiar with O-Desk, which allows anyone to set up a project desk and then look for people with the necessary skills, and manage payments, while taking a percentage from all transactions.

If your system has a login requirement, then can social-login be established to let people log-in with their log-in from the Research Cooperative, or Facebook, O-desk, etc etc.?

Integration might also take the form of simply providing information about the pros and cons of different team building systems, with links added.

Cheers, Peter

hi,

I have reach a good stage in my development of the open publication system.I initially started with java but changed to catalyst. Catalyst is a kind of perl-application server quite fast and convenient to use for such project.

I don't really know what to do with it. This is really a totally open publication system that belongs to nobody - and by design impossible to modify ( it's based on crypto keys ) but it needs to be hosted somewhere. It could be integrated with your website, I could provide API for your website to link the projects created on this platform. It needs however to be hosted on a server with the catalyst framework installed but I can provide this.

It's done completed yet but I really would like it to be useful and to live and not to sleep on a website that nobody would visit.

I can send you screens and doc if you feel it is interesting.

Dear Martin,

Thanks very much... I started browsing and like many of the points you are making. I need to give some serious thought to it all, but am hard pressed with writing tasks of my own this month...

More later (sooner rather than too late I hope).

I updated the doc, here is the new pdf version

This is a document that describes the basic features of what could be this open publishing web system.

I am waiting for feedback about this idea, if the project looks worth it I would start funding it and developing it and planning integration withresearchcooperative.org and lulu.com ( and eventually other systems ) .

I feel there could be a real good integration with the research cooperative but this needs to be discussed how this could be done.

Dear Martin,

A further thought: if you would like to write a more complete note/article about your publishing system and project, then this could be published here as a 'Short Communication' - see:

http://researchcooperative.org/group/short-communications-of-the-research-cooperative

Copyright for other uses (e.g. on your own website) would be yours.

Or you could simply post it as a blogpost from your own profile page.

Best regards, Peter

Dear Martin,

I would really welcome a doc about your project. When you are happy with it, I could also send it out through the network in various simple ways, in order to encourage feedback.

The 'new' dynamic that I have been hoping for here at the Research Cooperative is really an old dynamic I had the privilege of enjoying (in the 1980s in Australia) as a PhD research student:

... in an a research department where staff and students had equal-sized offices, where publishing was a constant activity, with support of an in house illustrator and photographer, where students were expected to initiate and be single authors of their own papers, but who could count on the support and interest of senior staff who had no need and no desire to be coauthors for work that was primarily the work of the student.

Where technical and academic staff and students were all treated as equal humans.

That's the kind of space I have been hoping to create here - not a system that is focused on academic status climbing, or that seeks to exploit the natural fears and uncertainties that many have about academic status.

Publishers and employers alike have been using so-called academic impact factors as sticks to beat young researchers with -- a lazy alternative to actually talking, reading, and making informed assessments of the value or quality or potential of research and of people doing research.

Thanks, P.

Yes some collaborative tools do exist but what I am taking about is a real publishing lifecycle management going through the steps of a publication. I think maybe I should write a doc about this project, it could be shared here.

It could beinterestingto combine this social network aspect and the publishing system because the social network could fuel the publishing system with people because obviously success of publishing systems comes from the people that works with it.

The publishing system would work only with books and books that present the fundamentals of some disciplines, technical books ( techniques for problem solving, solving equations etc.. ) so mainly undergraduate and graduate in a great variety of disciplines.

could we raise interest? could we raise interest from Nobel prices. Fields medalists, known authors? Known scientists? and in general from a lot of talented people.

As you said there is growing problem and this is that most people seem to choose to remain anonymous just like if they were fearing contradiction or free debate. I have the feeling people in the past had not this problem. Of course authors should protect themselves but acting and working as a porcupine is not really an acceptable strategy. by these days.

I have the feeling that many talented people in science would like to join but they fear for their 'reputation' or 'safety' and only deal almost exclusively with these established publishers that as you say outlived the founders and are no longer selling nothing but 'prestige' and 'fame'.

Well can we really create a new dynamic? Here and now?

Dear Martin,

I wonder if most of the elements you need already exist, though scattered across multiple platforms, with services like Adobe, Wordpress, Google Docs, Dropbox, Backburner (for backup), MSWord tracking, and so on? (not to mention the Open Source variants of such services).

What might be most needed, and maybe this is your approach, is a platform that provides templates (your frameworks and guidelines?) for combining such services with the specific steps and agreements needed to produce a book.

Cheers, Peter

my personal problem, and I amsurprisedapparentlynot so many people share my concerns is that we could reach a total control of sciencethroughscience publication and that alternative models are not taken seriously. Andunfortunatelypeople usually say 'gosh, wow! I am getting published by Springer-Verlag!", what they call 'top-notch' publishers.

in my mind publication should be a free and moral and quality process. This is not an easy subject especially when we introduce also money andremuneration.

I am not a publisher and will never be but yes I would like to try tocontributeto building at least one virtual publishing system that could be used as a template.

As you say things are now changing very rapidly and things you thought were yours just don't belong to you anymore ( just like the money of bank customers in Cyprus ) so this should be taken into consideration that any facebook or ning could tomorrow 'steal' all the work of the people and make the platform paid or anything like this.

This is a global thought because this is also linked with internet ( how do we guarantee that we can use freely internet in the future ?) and so fourth.

anyway, the point would be to create a brand- whatever it is - that would mean high-quality publishing. As you will know publishing quality books would require a complex system with editors, reviewers etc... but the resources do exists as far as I know.

Once the virtual publishing platform would be set up, this could give lots of freedom for authors to deal with freelancers and volunteers , the virtual platform would provide frameworks and guidelines.