Lambert Heller: He is an open research infrastructures specialist and a librarian (LIS master’s degree from Humboldt University, Berlin). He started TIB’s Open Science Lab in 2013. His work centers on research infrastructures and cultural heritage institutions, and how they change and grow in a networked, globalized world.
Heller, Lambert, Ronald The & Sönke Bartling 2014. “Dynamic Publication Formats and Collaborative Authoring.” Opening Science: The Evolving Guide on How the Internet is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing. Springer International Publishing. http://book.openingscience.org.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/vision/dynamic_publication_formats.html.
Springer International Publishing published the book Opening Science in January 2014. The content of the book is Open Access with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license. The website in which the text is embedded is intended for collection of comments and revisions of the book chapters as the text evolves. The text is formatted in Markdown, is converted into HTML by the Pandoc document converter and the Jekyll static site generator, and all files are stored in git version control and hosted on Github.
In contrast to traditional printed journals that are closely bound to the medium of paper, static and lacking the ability to be revised over time, the authors seek to depict the potentials of Dynamic Publication Formats and to analyze the necessary prerequisites needed to implement them. The authors argue that dynamic publication formats will enable bodies of text, graphics, and rich media to be changed quickly and easily while still being available to a wide audience.
The authors begin by depicting the traditional path along which scholarly publications tread, critiquing such issues as the need to publish new editions and articles when new evidence is found, the lack of context for citations, and the retraction of articles/books due to scientific misconduct. The authors present the issues involved with current publications systems and how they impede on the pursuit of dynamic knowledge creation processes.
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The text suggests that there must be room for maneuver and collaboration, as well as giving credit where it is due. The installation/experimental ethnography should not be seen as complete projects, but as always changing and open to revision. This is particularly useful for thinking about the work that we do on PECE. Perhaps the text encourages us to see our work as contributing to the general scientific body of knowledge, and thus there should be more openness regarding remixing and reuse.
The article is an overview of the shift from "conventional" modes of print publishing characterised by closed-door peer-review process, limited revisions of published work, restricted modes of collaborative authorship towards a more "dynamic" publication workflow and system afforded by digital platforms and tools that allow revisiting of what it means to write and to publish. The article raises questions we should think about when we make these shifts.
Wikis (not Wikipedia) are presented as a compromise between collaborative scientific publishing and encyclopedic initiatives: open platforms edited by a large group of users with content control by a core group (people who have accumulated trust and expertise through sustained engagement with the digital infrastructure of the wiki and the topic), where it is possible to see revisions and comments. A wiki's core group can set up style guides and protocols for workflow, and future users work in the consensus of the core group.
"It is important to notice that in many disciplines and scientific cultures, mainly humanities, textual reproduction with precious words and in a literary manner is a considerable feat which is beyond the pure transportation of information. Here, the reusing and remixing of content has to be seen in a different context... Concepts such as ‘transclusion’ , ‘pull-requests’, and ‘forking’ allow for different kinds of remixing and ‘reuse’ of earlier publications...
