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] >