Sure, but first, is this capable of being done at all? I have never seen a method of bibliographic control that can cope with the complete range of publications, even just print publications. Perhaps we need to proceed within narrow domains.
Second, is this capable of being done by crowd-sourcing, or does it require enforceable standards? The work of Open Library is not a promising model, being a uncontrolled mix, done to many different standards. Actually, within the domain of scientific journal articles from the last 10 years in Western languages, the best current method seems to be a mechanical algorithm, the one used by Google Scholar. True, it does not aggregate perfectly--but it does aggregate better than any other existing database. And it does not get them all--nor could it no matter how much improved, for many of the versions that are actually available are off limits to its crawlers. On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Brian J Mingus <brian.min...@colorado.edu> wrote: > > > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Jodi Schneider <jodi.schnei...@deri.org> > wrote: >> >> On 21 Jul 2010, at 19:47, Brian J Mingus wrote: >> >> Finn, >> I'm not a fan of including a portion of the the title for a couple of >> reasons. First, it's not required to make the key unique. Second, it makes >> the key longer than necessary. Third, the first word or words from a title >> are not guaranteed to convey any meaning. >> Regarding a Reference: namespace, I can see how this has some utility and >> why projects have moved to it. However, I consider it a stopgap solution >> that projects have implemented when what they really want is a proper wiki >> for citations. Here are a few quick things that you can't do (or would have >> to go out of your way to do) with just a Reference namespace that you can do >> with a wiki dedicated to all the world's citations: >> - Custom reports that are boolean combinations of citation fields, ala >> SMW. This requires substantive new technology as SMW doesn't scale. >> - User bibliographies which are a logical subset of all literature ever >> published. >> >> Not sure why a Reference namespace couldn't do this. >> >> - Conduct a search of the literature. >> >> Or this (you can search just one namespace) >> >> - A new set of policies that are not necessarily NPOV, regarding the >> creation of articles that discuss collections of literature (lit review-like >> concept). The content of these policies will emerge over years with the help >> of a community. These articles could, for instance, help people who are >> navigating a new area of a literature avoid getting stuck in local minima. >> It could point out the true global context to them. It could point out >> experimenter biases in the literature; for example, a recent article was >> published where it was found that citation networks in academic literature >> can have a tendency to form based on the assumption of authority, when in >> fact that authority is false, bringing a whole thread of publications into >> doubt. >> >> I'm not sure that literature reviews belong in the same wiki as citations. >> That's definitely a different namespace. :) >> >> - Create wiki articles about individual sources. >> >> This might or might not be the same wiki -- but that could be interesting. >> I could imagine a page for a journal being pulled in from several sources: >> the collection of citations in the wiki for that journal, RSS from the >> current contents (license permitting), a Wikipedia page about the journal >> (if it exists), a link to author guidelines/submission info, open access >> info from SHERPA/ROMEO, .... In this vision, very little of the content >> "lives" in this wiki itself. Rather, it's templated from numerous other >> places.... Perhaps in the way "buy this book" links are handled in >> librarything -- there are numerous external links which can be activated >> with a checkbox, and some external content that is pulled in based on >> copyright review. >> >> While I am not dedicated to any of these things happening, I also do not >> wish to rule them out. The hope is that a new community will emerge around >> the project and guide it in the direction that is most useful. My hope in >> this thread is that we can identify some of the most likely cases and >> imagine what it will be like, so that we can convey this vision to the >> Foundation and they can get a sense of the potential importance of the >> project. >> >> Scoping is a big problem, I think -- because it would help to have a >> vision of which of several related tasks/endpoints is primary. >> I think an investigation of what fr.wikipedia is doing would be really >> useful -- does anybody edit there, or have an interest in digging into that? >> Questions might include: What is the reference namespace doing? What isn't >> it doing, that they wish it would? Did they consider alternatives to a >> namespace? How is maintenance going? Do they see the reference namespace as >> longstanding into the future, or as a stopgap? >> -Jodi > > More broadly speaking, a reference namespace does not accomplish the goal of > having a free repository of all citations, complete with collections of > citations curated by the community, and documentation of those citations by > the community, in various forms to be determined by the community. While it > is possible to create specialized cases that suit the narrow needs of > individual projects, I and many of the people I have spoken to see a > justification for a broader vision. This broader vision is directly in line > with the WMF mission of giving free access to the world's knowledge. One of > the first steps must be making the Wikipedia's aware of that knowledge, and > enabling them to build linked networks of information around it. > Brian > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
