eLanguage.net: Shifting the paradigm in Linguistics

eLanguage.net Shifting the paradigm in linguistics from academic publishing to scholarly communication *Dieter Stein, Cornelius Puschmann University of Duesseldorf [email_address] [email_address] PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2007 12 July 2007

Contents of this presentation
eLanguage: Concept & Organization
The Technology
Where We Are
The Future: Beyond the Paper Metaphor

A) eLanguage: Concept and Organization

What is eLanguage?
an aggregator for peer-reviewed content from OA journals in Linguistics
a platform for publishing scientific articles on-line
a source of meta-information on academic Linguistics (book reviews, department news etc)
an academic community on the Web

Project Partners

From Language to eLanguage
Language started in 1924
roughly 7,000 individual and institutional subscribers
issues since 2001 available via Project MUSE
narrow focus due to space limitations
slow publication cycle
high production and dissemination costs
the goal was to widen the focus
while at the same time reducing costs
and facilitating access ...an Open Access approach was the ideal solution

eLanguage organizational structure
the eLanguage editorial board reviews co-journal proposals
the editor in chief is responsible for the management of the platform
co-journals are independent once they have been approved
Editor in Chief Editorial Board

Co-journal accreditation process forms an editorial board and submits a proposal reviews proposal and approves or asks for revisions is admitted as an eLanguage co-journal eLanguage Editorial Board

Expanded organizational structure content IT services

B) The Technology

A mashup of tools OJS 2.1.1 + Wordpress 2.2

Data from OJS and WP aggregated on the main page blog section content (WP) co-journal content (OJS) master feed

Open Source Reliability
all first-level products (OJS, WP) are based on second-level FOSS technologies and protocols such as PHP, MySQL, Apache and RSS/Atom
mature, well-supported and well-documented products
90% of software development is outsourced - advantage : we can focus on the content and on making it accessible

Using external tools for added services
Google Domain Tools (admin)
Google Custom Search (search)
Google Mail (email)
Google Groups (mailing lists)
Google Analytics (web statistics)
Technorati (blog management)
Feedburner (feed diagnostics)

Three goals for maximum accessibility
to make all eLanguage content accessible via search
to make everything published in eLanguage accessible both via library catalogs and commercial search engines
to make access to our content independent from access to our website by using feeds (everything but the full text of articles is available via feeds)

Benefits of the platform
Benefits for...
readers : content is free and easily accessible
authors : no costs, greater impact, faster publication, ownership of article, precise metrics
editors : full control over their publication, less or no headaches about technical issues, no volumes of specialized knowledge necessary
Linguistic Society of America : "what's good for the discipline is good for the association", great visibility
HBZ/DIPP : strategic value / experience

C) Where We Are

eLanguage Beta

Recent developments
as of July 2007, four journals have been accredited:
Constructions
Anette Rosenbach (University of Paderborn, Germany),
Alexander Bergs (University of Osnabruck, Gemany)
Journal of Mesoamerican Languages and Linguistics (JMLL)
David Mora-Marín (University of North Carolina, USA)
Linguistic Issues in Language Technology (LiLT)
Annie Zaenen (PARC Inc / Stanford University, USA),
Bonnie Webber (University of Edinburgh, UK),
Martha Palmer (University of Colorado, USA)
Semantics & Pragmatics (S&P)
Kai von Fintel (Massachusetts of Technology, USA)
David Beaver (University of Texas, USA)
a blog has been launched to keep people informed
launch in spring/summer 2008

Issues
producing content takes time
many researchers have a “wait and see” approach to Open Access
communication must be managed well when working in a geographically dispersed team
for our needs, OJS could be simpler in terms of its UI, even if that meant less functions

What could we do better?
Once the platform is hugely successful we could look into...
unified citation database
preprint repository (?)
more "reader" involvement (blog comments? link external sources?)

D) The Future: Beyond the Paper Metaphor

What happens if projects like eLanguage succeed?
Let's assume that in the future...
a large percentage of all scholarly research is OA
the storage of research data is heavily centralized in a few powerful archives
the content is annotated manually by its creators, as well as through automatic means (keyword extraction) and social web practices (tagging)
retrieval of this content largely takes place via commercial search engines
How does the role of academic libraries change if the storage , annotation and retrieval of information is realized elsewhere?

Publishing as the key role of the future
In the future...
archiving, enrichment and retrieval are likely to be strongly centralized,
while Net access and storage will increasingly be treated as commodities
What remains is to enable the creation and dissemination of scholarly content as it takes new forms and becomes usable in new ways
Universities, scholarly societies and information infrastructure providers need to work together to achieve this goal

Thank You for listening!

eLanguage.net Shifting the paradigm in linguistics from academic publishing to scholarly communication *Dieter Stein, Cornelius Puschmann University of Duesseldorf [email_address] [email_address] PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2007 12 July 2007

eLanguage.net: Shifting the paradigm in Linguistics

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eLanguage.net: Shifting the paradigm in Linguistics — Presentation Transcript