From Publishing to CommunicationeLanguage, WALS and digital linguistics

Cornelius PuschmannUniversity of Dsseldorfcornelius.puschmann@uni-duesseldorf.de

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

5 November 2007

Contents of this presentation

eLanguage: concept & organization

The technology

Where we are

eLanguage and WALS: a comparison

More than putting things on the Web

Open access, open data what are the implications?

eLanguage: concept and organization

What is eLanguage?

an aggregator for peer-reviewed content from open access journals

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 reducing costs

and facilitating access

...an open access approach was the ideal solution

eLanguage organizational structure

Editor in ChiefEditorial BoardConstructionsJMALLS & PLiLT 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

Co-journal accreditation process

Team of researchers behinda prospective new journaleLanguage Editorial BoardNew Journalforms an editorial board and submits a proposal

reviews proposal and approvesor asks for revisions

is admitted as an eLanguageco-journal

Expanded organizational structure

content

IT services

The technology

A mashup of tools

OJS 2.1.1

+

Wordpress 2.2

Data from OJS and WP aggregated on the main page

blog sectioncontent (WP)co-journalcontent (OJS)masterfeed

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

Where we are

eLanguage Beta

Semantics & Pragmatics

Recent developments

as of November 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-Marn (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 2008, possibly BNs will be launched earlier

Issues

producing content takes time

many researchers have a wait and see approach to digital publishing

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 has successfully launched we will look into...

unified citation database

preprint repository

more "reader" involvement (blog comments? link external sources?)

eLanguage and WALS: a comparison

From print to digital

eLanguage

paper journal - platform for scholarly communication

narrow focus - diversity

slow publication cycle - faster and more flexible publication

limited access - open access

WALS Online

atlas - interactive research tool

completed - continually updated

read-only access read-write access

limited access - open access

More than putting things on the Web

Useful but problematic metaphors

an electronic journal can be designed to look like a print product

but the digital form makes entirely new uses possible

storage just happens

publishing = conserving knowledge for posterity

communication = exchanging information more rapidly

Practical implications

we will increasingly not just publish completed papers on the Web, but conduct ongoing discussions and debates there

collaborative research on the Web (with something like WALS Online) is the next logical step

tools for data visualization, modeling etc are likely to become ubiquitous

Research will increasingly happen on the Web

Open access, open data what are the implications?

Implications

natural language data is available on an unprecedented scale

tools for processing and analysis of this data are increasingly available

a virtual space for discussing and interpreting the results of such analyses is also available (your research blog or wiki, eLanguage, WALS...)

Most importantly, all of these levels are open and accessible to everyone!

How we can benefit

collaborative language documentation (endangered languages, typology)

more salient corpus-based investigations (syntax, semantics, pragmatics, ...)

better intradisciplinary connectivity (what are my colleagues doing?)

better interdisciplinary communication (too many related fields to name!)

Thanks for listening!