publishing model

[Rudolf Jaksa]

I'm thinking how to apply free software development
(publishing) model to scientific publishing...

Present scientific publishing:

 1. Article (for instance paper.pdf) is sent to journal or
    conference for review (it is in camera ready form).
 2. If author will get some feedback from reviewers, she
    may improve this article.
 3. Article is printed on paper (and presented in talk).
 4. Other people may read this article and use ideas from it
    in their future work.

Free software model applied to scientific publishing:

 1. All the data useful for further work on problem are
    published in single "package".  Instead of only camera
    ready paper, also source code for algorithms, pictures,
    sample data etc. are published.  This "package" is
    displayed somewhere on the internet.
 2. Availability of this work is announced in established
    mailing lists or internet forums.
 3. Other people may download this "article" or read it
    directly on internet.
 4. They also may download it, incorporate parts of it in
    their own future work, or publish improved version of
    this article.  They may send their comments to the
    author and she can incorporate them into next version of
    article ("package").

Good thing about this model is that it is yet proved that
it works, however it may not work for "scientific articles".
But in my opinion working on paper or on program code is
very similar.  And many people seems think that free
software itself is inspired by scientific publishing...

I like on this model (as opposite to current scientific
publishing model) also:

  * Less money are wasted in publishing process, and it
    means that more people are "allowed" to read article.
    And more people are allowed to publish too.
  * Continuation of work is better as they may be several
    versions of single "article".  This is opposite to
    several articles spread across different journals and
    proceedings.
  * Exchange of ideas can by much faster.  The loop
    author-reviewer-readers-author can be reduced to few
    days if the work is actually "hot topic".
  * More data and more types of data can be published,
    publishing is not restricted to 10 pages of text.
  
Actually I know about one book published this way and few
program packages with papers included, but I think this free
software publishing approach may be more useful for
scientific community.  I can even imagine this as primary
publishing method in science...


R.Jaksa