Liquid Journals – an approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era Marcos Baez, Aliaksandr Birukou, Fabio Casati, Maurizio Marchese and the LiquidPub team University of Trento, Italy

LiquidPub project o Small or medium-focused research project funded by the European Commission under FP7 FET OPEN (Future and Emerging Technologies) scheme o Runs from May 2008 till April 2011 o Budget of 2.1M € o Partners o University of Trento, Italy o Spanish National Research Council, Spain o Springer, Germany o Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France o University of Fribourg, Switzerland eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 2

Goal of the LiquidPub project o Capture the lessons learned and opportunities provided by: o the Web and open source, o agile development o to develop o concepts, models, metrics, and tools o for an efficient (for people), o effective (for science), o and sustainable (for publishers and the community) o way of creating, disseminating, evaluating, and consuming scientific knowledge o Understand what’s good for science, and make it happen eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 3

What do we do in LiquidPub? o See o Scientific Knowledge Objects o Research evaluation and peer review analysis o Managing lifecycle of web artifacts o Discovering scientific communities o Licensing and copyright o Three case studies: o Liquid Journals o Liquid Books (collaborative creation of [not only] teaching material) o Liquid Conferences (platform for interdisciplinary conferences where invited papers are presented for community discourse) eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 4

eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 5 Motivating Scenario o What’s the goal of journals today? o Select and group related content, after a submission of a paper o Useful to find content, useful (?) to evaluate o What’s under the hood? o Print/ship cost money: need to be sure it’s good before it is published. Only way peer review o “issues”/volumes needed for printing and organizational reasons o Probably the best possible model in the pre-web era Scarce resource was printing and distribution

eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 6 o The Web has changed the way we get, share, produce and consume scientific content Internet The Web Era

eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 7 o Also social changes.. Readers Authors How do I get interesting content! How do I make my work visible! The Web Era The scarce resource now is the attention [Huberman] So much info out there - I’d rather go for known sources! Reviewers 15 review to do by tomorrow…

eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 8 o Original reasons for the current model are gone (does not necessarily mean current model is still not the best) o Back to the roots: How to provide interesting content? datasetspapersblogs Journals: Revisited

eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 9 Liquid journals: Proposal..already available on the Web, in pre-prints, journals, proceedings, blogs…...with colleagues, friends, other people working on the same topic… … to broader community

Let’s see where we are eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 10/30 Image from

Key intuition 1 – evolving network of multifacet objects

Key intuition 2 – It’s subjective!

Key intuition 3 – editing power of the community

Key intuition 4 – readers create knowledge

Key intuition 5 - Diversity

Definition: a liquid journal o Collection of (interesting and relevant) links to scientific resources (contributions, projects, events, people, …) o LJ do not host content, just link it o Possibly defined as a query over the Web o Selected by editors (Possibly based on defined procedures) o Offered by a publisher o May change continuously and may have issues (snapshots) o Users may define relations between resources

Relationship types (examples) o Temporal (e.g., next_version) o Representation (e.g., alternative_repr_of) o Structural (e.g., performed_on, reporting_on) o Authorship (contributed, edited,…)

Filling journal with content Step 1

Automatic query over Web eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 19/30

From iPhone eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 20

From eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 21

From Google Scholar eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 22

From CiteULike eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 23

From ICaST (published by ICST) eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 24

Other options we envisioned eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 25 o Demos from Share o Workflows and files from o Videos: o Links from Facebook, DBLP, ACM Digital Library, Springerlink o All those are subject to availability of API and Terms of Use o From citation snippets

Organizing content Step 2

Cooking area, sharing and annotating eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 27 You can drop contributions on the dock for putting stuff in the Cooking area or sharing them with your contacts You define the quick links by dropping journals and users here Non intrusive and without distracting effects

Adding relations eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 28

Navigation eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 29

Publishing journal Step 3

Making a new issue eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 31

After publishing eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 32 (5 new)

Consuming journals Step 4

Information about journals I follow, where I appear, etc. eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 34 LJs publishing me Scientific metrics UNITN-DB-Group Authors Communities Fabio Juan Alejandro Computer Science Physics Biology Tags Peer-review Scientific publ Sources Time Springer Arxiv Filters » LJs I edit Lifecycle Management Data integration My subscriptions Peer review (5 new) Scientific metrics (7 new)

Consuming relations eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 35

Sharing with research group eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 36

Project/research group/personal page eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 37

Thematic wikis eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 38 From

Social networks eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 39 LJ I edit LJ I follow

Not just reading… o Navigating o Sharing o Linking and annotating (selfishly) o Better search and management of info overload o Knowledge extraction from readers/editors o Efficient dissemination o Publish what I want, when I want, how I want, then deliver it through the information pipes o Make evolution of ideas explicit o Reuse implicit review that people do anyways when selecting content for their own purposes

…there are some shortcomings o Do I get tenure o if my paper appear in a LiquidJournal? o If I am a good editor of an LJ (good content selector) o Would people use LJ? o We don’t know yet, but try to develop it so that WE can use it eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 41

o Readers get interesting and relevant scientific content o Multi-faceted: blogs, papers, datasets, etc.. o Peer-reviewed vs. non peer-reviewed o Diverse content o Authors get real-time dissemination and evaluation o Consider other aspects of research productivity: good selector, good ideas, good reviewer, incentives for early sharing o Benefits for editors: o Publish first, then gain acceptance (even if you a student) o Try with new community (e.g. new interdisciplinary area) and see if it really worth a journal 42 …but there are also benefits

Do you want to see it running? Image from

Choose eSI Workshop, Edinburgh, 12 May 2010 Aliaksandr Birukou – Liquid Journals: An approach for knowledge dissemination in the Web era 44

More o The LiquidPub project. o Google liquidpub-announce and subscribe if you are interested (VERY low traffic): o Or, subscribe to our blog: o Or, follow us on twitter: o Participate in our surveys: o Scientific publishing and Web o Rank scientists (and fight metrics) at

Ranking Researchers via Peer-Voting o Rank researchers via voting o 1 st Step: conduct surveys to gather votes reflecting the perceived impact of researchers o 2 nd Step: correlate votes with bibliometric indicators of impact using voting-based ranking algorithms o How to participate: 2 to 20 minutes (you choose!!!)

Thanks for your attention