Third, research software developers typicallywork in a competitive environment, either academic or commercial, where innovation is rewarded muchmore highly than evolutionary and collaborative software reuse. This is especially true in a fundingenvironment driven by the need for intensive innovation, where reusing other peoples’ code is a likelysource of criticism

Theadvent of the internet has greatly reduced the monetary value that can be extracted from paper-basedacademic content

and so are un-likely to be a major source of continued revenue

Academic publishers have been slower to encounter, but are not immune from, the disruption that theinternet has wrought on other content industries

neitherhas an attractive business model

Bereft of almost all their original value to scholars, libraries are being encouraged to both competein the electronic publishing market and to take on the task of running ‘institutional repositories’, in effectpublishing their scholars’ data and research communications

eward systems that encourage scholars and researchers to participate and contribute

It also means the creation of a knowledge infrastructure that allows the sharing ofcomputationally executable components, such as workflows, computer code and statistical calculations,as scientifically valid content components; and an infrastructure that allows these components to bemade accessible, reviewed, referenced and attributed. To do this, we have to develop best practices fordepositing research datasets in repositories that enable linking to relevant documents, and that havehigh compliance levels driven by appropriate incentives, resources and policies. In addition, for scientificdomains, the new forms of publication must facilitate reproducibility of results, which means, at leastforin silicoresearch, the ability to preserve and re-perform executable workflows or services. This willrequire the ability to re-construct the context in which these objects were executed, which may wellcontain or reference other executable objects as well as data objects that may evolve through time. Inthis way, the content of communications about research will follow the same evolutionary path that wehave seen for general web content: a move from the static to the increasingly dynamic

where every claim, hypothesis, argument—every significant element of the discourse—can be explicitly represented

A dispassionate observer, perhaps visiting from another planet, would surely be dumbfounded by how,in an age of multimedia, smartphones, 3D television and 24/7 social network connectivity, scholarsand researchers continue to communicate their thoughts and research results primarily by means of theselective distribution of ink on paper, or at best via electronic facsimiles of the same.

Derive new methods and metricsfor evaluating quality and impact thatextend beyond traditional print outputsto embrace the new technologies

Derive new financially sustainablemodels of open access

Add data, software, and workflowsinto the publication as first-class re-search objects

Develop tools and technologies thatbetter support the scholarly lifecycle

Rethink the unit and form of thescholarly publication

Themes 4–6 concern the enterprise of scholarly publishing, including business models and theattribution of credit. In these sections we discuss how scholarship is evaluated, accredited andmonetized; current and new models and modes of assigning copyright and intellectual propertyrights; the financial aspects of scholarly publishing; and the mechanisms for assessing the qualityand value of researchers and their research outputs, and of attributing credit and worth to them.

While not disputing the expressive power of the written word to communicate complex ideas, ourfoundational assumption is that scholarly communication by means of semantically-enhanced media-richdigital publishing is likely to have a greater impact than communication in traditional print media or elec-tronic facsimiles of printed works.

better links to data, the publication of software tools,mathematical models, protocols and workflows, and research communication by means of social mediachannels

A successful blog therefore has to balance itself between a writer’s own take on the world and others. Some bloggers collect, or “aggregate,” other bloggers’ posts with dozens of quick links and minimalist opinion topspin: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit does this for the right-of-center; Duncan Black at Eschaton does it for the left. Others are more eclectic, or aggregate links in a particular niche, or cater to a settled and knowledgeable reader base.

But writing in this new form is a collective enterprise as much as it is an individual one—and the connections between bloggers are as important as the content on the blogs. The links not only drive conversation, they drive readers. The more you link, the more others will link to you, and the more traffic and readers you will get. The zero-sum game of old media—in which Time benefits from Newsweek’s decline and vice versa—becomes win-win. It’s great for Time to be linked to by Newsweek and the other way round. One of the most prized statistics in the blogosphere is therefore not the total number of readers or page views, but the “authority” you get by being linked to by other blogs. It’s an indication of how central you are to the online conversation of humankind.

They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.

But perhaps the quintessential blogger avant la lettre was Montaigne. His essays were published in three major editions, each one longer and more complex than the previous. A passionate skeptic, Montaigne amended, added to, and amplified the essays for each edition, making them three-dimensional through time. In the best modern translations, each essay is annotated, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, by small letters (A, B, and C) for each major edition, helping the reader see how each rewrite added to or subverted, emphasized or ironized, the version before. Montaigne was living his skepticism, daring to show how a writer evolves, changes his mind, learns new things, shifts perspectives, grows older—and that this, far from being something that needs to be hidden behind a veneer of unchanging authority, can become a virtue, a new way of looking at the pretensions of authorship and text and truth. Montaigne, for good measure, also peppered his essays with myriads of what bloggers would call external links. His own thoughts are strewn with and complicated by the aphorisms and anecdotes of others. Scholars of the sources note that many of these “money quotes” were deliberately taken out of context, adding layers of irony to writing that was already saturated in empirical doubt.

But the superficiality masked considerable depth—greater depth, from one perspective, than the traditional media could offer. The reason was a single technological innovation: the hyperlink. An old-school columnist can write 800 brilliant words analyzing or commenting on, say, a new think-tank report or scientific survey. But in reading it on paper, you have to take the columnist’s presentation of the material on faith, or be convinced by a brief quotation (which can always be misleading out of context). Online, a hyperlink to the original source transforms the experience. Yes, a few sentences of bloggy spin may not be as satisfying as a full column, but the ability to read the primary material instantly—in as careful or shallow a fashion as you choose—can add much greater context than anything on paper. Even a blogger’s chosen pull quote, unlike a columnist’s, can be effortlessly checked against the original. Now this innovation, pre-dating blogs but popularized by them, is increasingly central to mainstream journalism.

the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication

If we had to trace the genealogy of the weblog back to its origin, we would probably find ourselves at the website of Dave Winer: Scripting News. Having started in April, 1997, this website is the longest-running blog on the internet and has an archive of every post ever made-starting with its very first which is comprised of a few scattered words and several now-broken links. The story of the blog between then and now is history that has developed so quickly that we can't keep track of it all.

I don’t think your average person quotes much at all’ was one assessment, ’teachers, preachers and the like do though’, or, from another I’m not sure if I quote very much in everyday life. It’s something I associate with prepared speeches and talks or the days when I mugged up quotes for exams and made sure to stick them all in so that the examiner would think I’d read widely (MO/S2207).

Dan Ingalls implemented a delightfully simple pop-up menu in Smalltalk that contained a column listing the four command names [9]. That menu evolved into the right-click contextual menus that are commonplace today.

(For the exhibition see: cut-and-paste.de (link is external))