Homepage http://project.liquidpub.org/
Status NOT active project
DISI role Coordinator
Project type Research Project
Dimension International
Acquisition date 2008-05-01
Start date 2008-05-01
End date 2011-04-30

Project astract

This project explores how ICT and the lessons learned from the social Web can be applied to provide a radical paradigm shift in the way scientific knowledge is created, evaluated, disseminated, and maintained.
We argue that the novel technologies can enable a transition of the "scientific paper" form its traditional "solid" form (i.e., a crystallization in space and time of a scientific knowledge artifact) to a "Liquid Publication", that can take multiple shapes, evolves continuously in time, and is enriched by multiple sources.
The intended benefits of this approach are:
- to increase the early circulation of innovative ideas (and hence a more effective dissemination);
- to reduce and use more effectively the time spent by researchers in creating, assessing and disseminating knowledge;
- to develop a new credit attribution process based on social networks, team/community work, collaborative problem solving, social reputation, and distribution of knowledge;
- to deliver innovative services and business models for publishers of Liquid Publications.

We aim at achieving these objectives by learning lessons and borrowing concepts from software engineering and the social Web, realizing in particular that 1) the generation of scientific knowledge is not dissimilar from the generation of other "products" of the human intellect, and agile and open source software in particular, and 2) that the collaborative, social, and "real-time" aspect of Web 2.0 can be applied to scientific knowledge dissemination as well. In this project we leverage these ideas to create a model for liquid publications (and liquid evaluation, liquid scientific journals, etc...) and a set of tools for liquid publication lifecycle management.
As often is the case, we expect a percolation of ideas, methods and tools used in the production of scientific knowledge into common knowledge generation processes, from corporate knowledge management to the preparation of courseware.

Keywords publication models, scientific metric, review processes, publication services
Fundings 1603940€

Fundings 601499€
Manager Fabio Casati