Cooling Down Web Science

The content of this ‘paper’ plays a secondary role, whereas the medium in which it is consumed through comes first. The characteristics of the medium has the most social and technical implications for the Web science community, whether the audience is reading this on a screen or printed paper, listening to a screen reader, watching a movie, taking part in presentation, or even interacting with the document. Our quest is for the research community to re-examine the current practices for scholarly publishing and communication: which mediums and behaviours for consumption and publication of information will benefit its ecosystem?

• Human Factors
• Theory

• Human-computer interaction
• Linked Data
• Media studies
• Semantic publishing
• Web science

• H.1.2 [Information Systems]: Human information processing
• H.4.m [Information Systems Applications]: Linked Data
• H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Web-based interaction
• I.7.4 [Document and Text Processing]: Electronic Publishing

Some context: In the 1967 book, The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan wrote that at the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means of apprehending the world are no longer possible; they are just too slow to be relevant or effective [1]. While McLuhan’s critique was on the overall position of the print media given the electric age, it stands especially valid today in the age of interactive new media. For instance, the World Wide Web is a cool media because its access, multi-linearity, and interactive possibilities offers multi-sensory and emotional states for individuals. This is in contrast to the print, where it is considered to be a hot media demanding primarily the full attention of our vision. As the printed word’s requirement for the other senses is minimal, it spoon-feeds the content to the reader in a l-i-n-e-a-r fashion. The literate or print culture is passive and is detached from immediate involvement because the medium has no such requirements. The cooler media on the other hand, requires a greater level of engagement from the audience at a faster rate. The speed up in media allows us to detect change better and consequently what we do best; pattern recognition. The Gestalt’s laws of grouping for instance, describes principle perceived stimulus based on certain rules.

The new media, like the Web, offers extensible interactions, creative participations, and social engagements. There is a natural human desire to connect and exchange memes with others, as well as to co-create. Given these opportunities, the fundamental question to ask here is, why should research communication in Web science be limited to, evaluated by, and rewarded on the archaic methods and artificial practices? The methods in question which are still used date back to the invention of the mechanical movable type printing press (circa 1450), even in the advent of the globally accessible medium and villages that are at our fingertips, vocals, and presence, at much faster turnaround time for publication to consumption than ever before. The artificial practices correspond to the publication workflows that are in place for majority of the Web conferences and journals. Naturally one wonders, what does it mean to have an academic achievement through a “publication”? If the Web can be purposed for greater possibilities than that of print alone, then we urgently need to address the question, what constitutes a scholarly article in Web science?

Today, it is evident that the typical publishing scenario for scholarly knowledge in Web science predominantly requires strict adherence to the printability aspects of the information e.g., page length, typographical guidelines. That is, all of the encompassing data for any given research and development, i.e., noteworthy items which the researcher knows, wants to communicate and demonstrate, must be channeled through the characteristics of the print media. In practice, this leads the research community to use tools that are tailored solely for printing or viewing (on screen). This (sticking to print) leads to unnecessary information loss or arbitrary filtering of the content, where it can be otherwise preserved via appropriate mediums, if and only if it can be demonstrated that such initiatives are of benefit to the academic community. Since print is one possible way to represent and communicate the information, it is worthwhile to investigate and employ alternative or complimentary representations that are more appropriate given the qualities of the Web. As document formats like PDF and Word - which are primarily designed and destined for printing and physical distribution - circulate in scientific circles and on the Web, we can make one observation: such formats, on the hot end of the media spectrum, are trying to exist and remain relevant inside a cool medium. An old form trying to remain relevant in the new form. The potentiality of their user experiences will indefinitely remain hampered as it is grounds itself on frozen text content.

This is Not a Paper [2] - an essay with a title as such, we wish we had written 20 years ago, which is still accessible with a single click! - raises a legitimate question whether any journals will exist in paper form within a decade or two. While we can safely answer that question today, our contention is that we are arguably in a better position to look ahead for the upcoming years. There are various emergent social and technical initiatives that are taking place under the umbrella term, Open Science.

At least within the context of scholastic Web science, it is not only compelling, but crucial for the research community to eat its own dogfood in order to unchain itself from antiquated traditions. A distinction to make here between print-first and Web-first is that it is the environment that influences social consequences, not the technology itself. To start in such endeavor, the primary requirement should be placed on the shoulders of the researchers themselves i.e., to use the mediums and processes that it has created towards technical and social progress. By retaining our focus on enabling researchers we postulate better access to knowledge. This is akin to why and how the Web came to be.

With this article, our intention is not to undermine the values of the print-centric culture, but rather embrace and use the new media forms where appropriate.

The effects of the mediums - in which the audience has chosen - for this ‘paper’ come first. The effects from these environments determine how the information will be experienced by our senses. For instance, if we are exposed to a screen device, which may be electronic or print, we will be using our vision nearly continuously. We may have the opportunity to interact with this medium by getting in contact with it and influencing its information output towards us. In cases where either the device or information is designed particularly for interaction, the effects of that medium differs to the individual which only uses their sight. A cool medium like the Web offers a higher form of awareness than what would be possible only through visual communication.

The implications of the content of this ‘paper’ on the other hand, come after the effects. The consequences of what the content offers is dependent on the characteristics of the medium. To take a trivial example, our bodily experience of a natural phenomenon like gravity, is completely different than studying its physical descriptions. Similarly, watching television for 6 hours a day has a stronger effect on us than whatever the content of the programs may be. Reading, listening, or seeing Martin Luther King, Jr. give his speech, I Have A Dream, effects us differently due to their resolution or definition for how we get to participate to receive the content. The ramifications of the speech simply comes later. In Understanding Media, McLuhan expresses that it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action [3].

Instinctively, we may ask: 1) which mediums are most appropriate to consume and produce knowledge output from scholarly work? and 2) how may the overall effects and implications be optimized? We will err on the side to not profess definite answers to these questions, but rather use them to probe on how to proceed.

To emphasize, the significance and the objective of our work is to enable researchers. The intention is to move from an individualistic research communication to one with higher degree of participation and cooperation. Only by collectively linking our knowledge we can witness and reap the benefits. This is an imperative undertaking with favourable use of publicly funded scholastic activities.

With the premise that academic efforts in Web science focus first and foremost on print, there is a missed opportunity with what the Web can offer. The pressing issue for the research community to resolve is ways in which it can get back to its roots. That is by returning to the original objectives of the Web: a decentralized information system for scientists. In the same manner, the Semantic Web vision is an extension of the Web principles with more focus on data available from interdisciplinary fields. In A Framework for Web Science [4], Tim Berners-Lee et alii, stated that the Web perhaps more than any other recent human construct carries with it any number of issues including privacy and protection, access and diversity, control and freedom. Structures that we design, engineer and research, and findings that emerge through analysis, will often have strong societal implications. For these reasons, it is sensible for Web researchers to alter their course away from constrained and inadequate media, and embrace what the native Web technologies have to offer.

One possible solution path is by ensuring that researchers, conference organizers, and academic institutions work together from their respective areas:

Researchers

The researchers in Web science can contribute by taking full responsibility in the creation and publication of their results. It is also by making sure that they take all the necessary measures to best transfer their knowledge using the Web e.g., linking their arguments and citations to others' on a granular level, interactive story-telling or experimentation possibilities for their readers. Moreover, researchers should take special care to ensure URI persistence and archiving of their work.

Conferences and Journals

Both conferences and online journals should encourage and accept research publications which use native Web technologies. There should be a completely transparent peer-review process. Aggregation or proceedings of the events should be machine-friendly and archival measures should be taken in addition to that of researchers.

Institutions

Given sufficient evidence of the Web science community’s acknowledgement of research and its contributions, academic institutions should officially acknowledge such work towards academic credit.

Irrespective of conferences, journals, and academic institutions being on board, researchers can take initiative by taking full control, ownership, and responsibility of their own knowledge, and have their contributions accessible to the society at maximum capacity. By starting with the Web-first approach, researchers and developers retain the opportunity to communicate their work through different mediums. On the other hand, if print-first approach is undertaken, it creates technical barriers to not only move the content into other media, but also blockade the use of enriched communication methods. For instance, the user experience of the printed word is fixed and does not allow the reader to explore further than what it visually made available by the authors. Only a single opportunity is given to comprehend the work. Today, in light of our accessibility to hypermedia, print-centric research communication remains to be an archaic way of consuming knowledge. We can do better.

We propose the acid test as mentioned in Enabling Accessible Knowledge [5] to improve the state of scholarly articles and communication. This acid test does not mandate a specific technology, therefore the challenge can be met by different solutions.

Linked Research [6] is an endeavour to pass this test, as well as to identify new areas in which academic publication and communication can be improved. The idea is for Web researchers to use the technologies in the native Web stack to access, share and discover knowledge. The Call for Linked Research [7] aims to encourage the “do it yourself” behaviour for sharing and reusing research knowledge using a workflow template. dokieli is an implementation of Linked Research and is publicly available [8] [9]. This ‘Paper’ is a Demo [10] demonstrates some interaction possibilities.

On the technical end, Linked Research approaches the implementation of semantic publication based on the most used and open international standard: HTML. For the most part, HTML is how people interact with the Web. It has a strong track record since 1989, and has yet to fail. It revolutionized in how we can leave the constraints of the print world, and widened the possibilities for communication. It provides all the hooks to work with the rest of the Web. That is, we are able to provide different views for the underlying content with CSS, enhanced interactions with JavaScript, and semantic annotation of the content itself through RDF representations, and microformats. It is a declarative approach to implementing the model–view–controller for scientific publications with progressive enhancement strategy in mind. Linked Research is intended to meet the authoring requirements of researchers, as well as to cross-link their knowledge with that of the others. In essence, contributing back to the Web at highest-fidelity. The return for the researchers in Web science is that, true access to community’s knowledge at a granular level. Consequently, it provides the framework to use mediums that are far more involving than the literate world alone. The intention here is to encourage compelling and effective research communication; going from static to dynamic information dissemination and use.

The question of which medium to use for research articles needs to be taken into consideration because it can remarkably impact how we receive the communicated message.

The physical or digital print based research places emphasis on the visual, meanwhile a comprehensive use of the Web enables a social and integrated experience. The cooler media enables us to cross-link intellectual relations.

We have been so overly concerned about restraining ourself to printable research, and the content within that frame, we have completely neglected on how that actually affected us. If we adapt to a holistic approach to using our senses, we can be more effective as knowledge seekers, instead of allowing the mimics of the past govern our development.

The next evolutionary step in scholastic Web science will be about communication, engagement and co-creation. The clash of the document formats will be a mere footnote. HTML is simply a gateway format.

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes - Morpheus, The Matrix (1999).

1. McLuhan, M.: The Medium is the Massage, p. 63, Gingko Press (2001), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/47679653
2. Burbules, N.C., Bruce, B.C.: This is Not a Paper, Educational Researcher, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign (1995), http://faculty.education.illinois.edu/burbules/papers/paper.1.html
3. McLuhan, M.: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, p. 9, First MIT Press edition (1994), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30734000
4. Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J.A., O'Hara K., Shadbolt, N., Weitzner, D.J.: Foundations and Trends® in Web Science. Vol. 1: No. 1, pp 1-130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1800000001, (2006), http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/263347/1/1800000001%5B1%5D.pdf
5. Capadisli, S., Riedl, R., Auer, S.: Enabling Accessible Knowledge, International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government (2015), https://csarven.ca/enabling-accessible-knowledge
6. Capadisli, S.: Linked Research, Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Semantic Publishing Vol 1994, ESWC (2013), https://csarven.ca/linked-research
7. Capadisli, S.: Call for Linked Research, Developers Workshop, ISWC (2014), https://csarven.ca/call-for-linked-research
8. Capadisli, S., Guy, A., Auer, S., Berners-Lee, T.: https://github.com/dokieli
9. dokieli, GitHub, https://github.com/dokieli/dokieli
10. Capadisli, S., Auer, S., Riedl, R.: This ‘Paper’ is a Demo, ESWC Posters/Demos (2015), https://csarven.ca/this-paper-is-a-demo