[interdisciplinary papers]

The online conference on the Future of Scientific Publications resumes with an new paper by Roberto Casati "On Publishing", now available on http://www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub. In his paper Roberto Casati discusses the social significance of publication in the life of a scientific knowledge object (SKO). The importance of publication is made evident by the complex issue of unpublication (the strong version of retraction whereby a SKO is completely destroyed). Unpublication is a tempting option in the electronic world. He argues against the viability of unpublication, both on practical and on principled grounds related to the cascading entitlements of published paper.

There is also a paper by Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder of the Oxford Internet Institute on "Sifting through the online web of knowledge" at: http://www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub. Their essay examines how researchers gain access to knowledge at a time when scholarly communication and materials are increasingly moving online. This topic has so far mainly been discussed in terms of journal publication and readership. Here a broader view is taken, including a variety of areas where knowledge production and dissemination is broader than journal publications and includes data and tools. A second reason to take a broader view extends the horizon still further, since scientific communication and collaboration are not just undergoing change within the research community, but also depend on wider changes such as the use of search engines and how they affect what can be found online generally. New search behaviours are particularly evident among a new generation of scholars and potential scholars. Hence we will look at changes in research as well as in the realm of online knowledge more broadly.

Have a look at the papers: www.interdisciplines.org/liquidpub.




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