Keith,
 It is an interesting subject - one of my "nutz" ideas was creation of a
semantic Web from scientific papers.
 let's assume that there is a market( interest ) for these "liberated"
papers.
Have your thought about business model? Who will pay for liberated papers
and for development of such a process/software?

On Apr 9, 2017 22:17, "Keith Lofstrom" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I watched "The Internet's Own Boy" about Aaron Swartz a few
> days ago.  Wonderful motivation: make academic literature
> publically accessable.  Stupid juvenile implementation:
> download a million papers from JSTOR in an MIT wiring
> closet.  Horrible outcome: Federal prosecution, suicide.
>
> I'll let others march in the streets and demand free ice
> cream and ponies.  I hope that works, but I wouldn't bet
> on it.
>
> I want to make the information contained in academic
> literature publically accessable ... and versioned, and
> updated, and weblinked, and supported.  The academics
> here might have some ideas.
>
> What if:  We (meaning those more capable than me) construct
> a software environment for disassembing the pdf elements of
> an academic paper, which a moderately literate person can
> use to REWRITE and redraw and reformat the paper as a
> substantially different work with an updated version of
> the same information in it?  I am inspired by some of the
> capabilities in Inkscape for reworking graphics into SVG.
>
> What if we improve that process, for example tying a graph
> in an old paper to data from new research that verifies,
> refines, or refutes it?  Move the slider on the graph from
> an original 1960 paper to a new graph that incorporates
> 2017 data?
>
> I have about a dozen published journal papers out there
> (one with over 200 citations) that I would love to
> "de-copyright" out of the clutches of the IEEE, Elsevier,
> etc.  My newest stuff is publically posted as pre-
> publication drafts before I submit it, but I would love
> simple tools that would ease the process of liberating
> my older work.  I'd be glad to help as an alpha-test
> guinea pig, also use the tool for new writing projects.
>
> There are other papers by other authors, some long since
> dead, that I would love to apply the same treatment to,
> so I can cite the liberated version in my open version.
>
> At the end of the rewrite process, the tool can compare
> the original and the liberated versions and estimate
> the legally actionable overlap, which a creative-commons
> community can continue to rework until the overlap is
> zero, and also re-rework if legal threats or court
> decisions add new restrictions to work around.
>
> I expect the Big Content owners will attempt to enact
> legislation to forbid the process, but I believe we can
> rewrite code and evade restrictions faster than they
> can write and pass legislation.  If they are panicky
> in their legislative responses, we can probably trick
> them into passing laws against their own practices.
>
> 95% of the work out there is obscure, and the world
> does not need a rewrite.  If 10 million (WAG) academic
> papers have ever been written, that might mean 500,000
> to be processed.  That would be a lot more work than
> went into wikipedia, but a lot fewer hours than all
> US citizens waste on TV in a year.  It might take a
> few decades, but a small subset of the world's thinkers
> could eventually get this done, and incorporate the
> process into the training of new scholars.
>
> Hopefully, the tools that we write will become the go-to
> tools for the creation of new works, a dual path process
> for authors that produces both a terse, stylized version
> that the JSTORs and Elseviers of the world can greedily
> guard and sell ...
>
> ... and an open, updatable, friendly version of the
> document that 99% of the world will actually use.
> Personally, I would love it if my best papers outlived
> me by centuries, steadily improving and accumulating
> hundreds of coauthors into the far future.
>
> While this would be a very complicated suite of tools to
> write, it's gotta be a lot easier than designing rockets
> and self-driving cars.
>
> Am I nuts?
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          [log in to unmask]
>