This document discusses the LiquidPub project, which aims to develop new models and tools for scientific publishing on the web. The project is funded by the European Commission and involves partners seeking to understand how to efficiently and effectively create, share, and consume scientific knowledge online. Some key areas of focus include liquid books, which allow collaborative authoring of book content, and instant communities, which enable ad-hoc discussion around seminars, talks or conferences. The overall goal is to understand how to best support science through more open and web-native scholarly communication.

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Publications meet the Web
Aliaksandr Birukou
University of Trento

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• Small or medium-focused research project funded by the European
Commission under FP7 FET OPEN (Future and Emerging Technologies)
scheme
• Runs from May 2008 till April 2011
• Budget of 2.1M €
• Partners
LiquidPub project

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• Capture the lessons learned and opportunities provided
by:
the Web and open source,
agile development
• to develop
concepts, models, metrics, and tools
for an efficient (for people),
effective (for science),
and sustainable (for publishers and the community)
way of creating, disseminating, evaluating, and consuming scientific
knowledge
• Understand what’s good for science, and make it
happen
LiquidPub goal

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o See http://project.liquidpub.org/research-areas
o Scientific Knowledge Objects
o Research evaluation and peer review analysis
o Managing lifecycle of web artifacts
o Licensing and copyright
o Case studies:
o Liquid Journals (tool for collaborative collection of interesting content)
o Liquid Books (collaborative creation of [not only] teaching material)
o Instant Communities (ad-hoc communities for people attending the
same seminar/talk/panel)
o Liquid Conferences (platform for interdisciplinary conferences where
invited papers are presented for community discourse)
LiquidPub. What we are working on?

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• Liquid books (LB): collaborative, evolutionary,
multi-facet versions of the traditional books
LiquidBooks. Concepts
Contributors Content Editors
Contract
Publisher
Editions

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Example # editions Authorship
and royalties
Modifications Time to
marker
Software
analogy
Traditional
book
Low Defined in
the contract,
need to re-
define for
each
variation
Not possible
without
agreement
with authors
and publisher
High Waterfall
Truly liquid
book
High, each
tailored to
target
audience
Simple and
well-defined
in the
contract, not
necessarily
involves
publisher
Possible
without asking
for permission
to authors and
publisher
Low Agile, open
source
LiquidBook. Examples

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Li• Pilot on publishing several liquid books with
Springer
• Send proposal (topic, authors, short
description) to fabio.casati AT gmail.com cc
birukou AT gmail.com
LiquidBooks for teaching. Call for action
winter summer autumn

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• Low barriers & short time to market -> more
competent but busy people involved in writing
• Agile -> up to date concurrent editions, tailored to
readers, pricing reflects improving quality and
completeness
• New credit attribution rules & less constraints ->
facilitate collaboration&reuse: editor(s)
take/edit/aggregate content from contributors
LiquidBooks. Features & Benefits

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Instant communities. Motivation
Image from http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/CareersAndTraining/PhotoGallery/Archive/CareerDayPanel.htm
interactioninteraction
I wonder
how it is
related con
data
mining…
I wonder
how it is
related con
data
mining…
I’ve seen a
relevant
paper at
ESWC’09
I’ve seen a
relevant
paper at
ESWC’09

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Other contexts
Image from http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/seminars/wednesday-seminar.jpg
Image from http://www.transformlifestyle.com/img/seminar4.jpg
SEMINARSEMINAR CONFERENCECONFERENCE
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/50981258@N05/4690733588/sizes/s/in/photostream/
RESEARCH GROUPRESEARCH GROUP

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Add material
MobileMobile
devicesdevices
E-mailE-mail
WebWeb

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Organize: link, tag, annotate
Data
Data
Data

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Share and consume

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• Visit our website:
The LiquidPub project. http://project.liquidpub.org
Tools we developed: http://project.liquidpub.org/tools
• Google liquidpub-announce and subscribe if you are
interested (VERY low traffic):
http://disi.unitn.it/mailman/listinfo/liquidpub-announce
• Or, subscribe to our blog:
http://liquidpub.wordpress.com
• Or, follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/liquidpub
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