Similar ideas

[pbouda]

Hi,

Michael pointed me to this:

http://cameronneylon.net/blog/open-research-computation-an-ordinary-journal-with-extraordinary-aims/
http://www.openresearchcomputation.com/

He seems to have similar ideas, but not specific to linguistics. IMO
the most important thing is what Cameron Neylon says in his post:

"We also rely on the people who write, develop, design, test, and
deploy this code. In the context of many research communities the
rewards for focusing on software development, of becoming the domain
expert, are limited. And the cost in terms of time and resource to
build software of the highest quality, using the best of modern
development techniques, is not repaid in ways that advance a
researcher’s career. The bottom line is that researchers need papers
to advance, and they need papers in journals that are highly regarded,
and (say it softly) have respectable impact factors. I don’t like it.
Many others don’t like it. But that is the reality on the ground
today, and we do younger researchers in particular a disservice if we
pretend it is not the case."

So we should support this journal as far as we can. Anybody with an
idea for a (joint) paper?

There are also software systems to enable OA journals and conferences:

http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs
http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ocs

I think the missing link here, and what our project would add, is the
possibilty to run everything in the cloud (which is quite ambitious,
of course). That would make a great OSS project, in my point of view.
And of course the focus on Linguistics, where you have to change the
minds of a lot of people to get this into the scientific community.
Easy access to a (online) workflow system and experiments should
really help. So let's start! :-)

Best,
Peter

[Richard Littauer]

Hey Peter,

Yes, I've met Cameron Neylon at the OKF meeting in Berlin. I wasn't familiar with this work, though - it's great. I think that it's still worth setting up our own journal and repository (for me, they are linked, although each caters to different needs). His journal focuses on publishing about software - some of this publishing is incredibly useful. But I think our approach is a bit different, as we're approaching social scientists - I don't want to limit it to just linguistics - and seeing if we can produce reproducible journal articles. Much like the Journal of Experimental Linguistics. Another difference for us, as you mention, is the cloud. I've seen the OJS - they're great, and that's ultimately what we'll be doing something with, I think.

As for Mark Liberman, I've been waiting for David de Roure to get back to me, again. I really want to know what his setup is so that I can see about that. Mark would be able to host the server at UPenn, and probably get a sysadmin for it, I think. That's what was relayed to me, anyway.

What might be good is to set up a quick wordpress where we can post relevant links like this quote and see if that will help generate support. 

As for a joint paper - I think, once we get the site up and running, that an introductory paper would be called for. Certainly conference-wise, and I was aiming to put it in a high impact journal of some sort (otherwise, the JEL or a journal that would allow for initial work to be displayed.) What do you think? Would that be a good enough topic?

So, in summary, steps to be taken now:

• Get a server - either host one, or keep in contact with Mark Liberman. I'll mail him now, updating him on where we are.
• Install WordPress on it to highlight the issues we want to - or, instead, install a blog as part of the site that we set up, and use that itself as the base. It might be a good idea to have a wordpress at the front and the site on a dev until it goes live, however. 
• I'll talk to Cameron Neylon, see if he's interested in helping us out or what sort of advice he has.
• Start working on a development paper talking about our reasons for building the site, how it will help social science (esp. linguistics), and where we are going from here?

Richard

Richard