[LINK] Government gives thumbs down to PDF format

[Tom Worthington]

Birch, Jim wrote:
> ... Beyond the PDF workshop ... requirements and developing
> some open source code to accelerate scientific knowledge sharing.  The
> science community could get a great benefit and online system that
> allows online access to both (journal) published and unpublished work,
> with ability to review and comment. https://sites.google.com/site/beyondthepdf/

Yes, there has been some work on knowledge sharing funded by the 
Australian Government, such as the Australian Research Repositories 
Online to the World (ARROW): <http://www.arrow.edu.au/about/>.

Unfortunately the rules on what counts as "published" discourages the
use of innovative online systems by academics in Australia. Academics 
are encouraged by their universities to publish in in foreign, 
traditional format, for-profit journals, as the universities then 
receive more funding from the Australian government. Researchers
and academics who use locally based, open access, free publishing are
peanalised by receiving less funding from the Australian Government and 
fewer promotions: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/11/evaluating-research-by-publication.html>.

There are some open access journals and publishers at Australian
diversities. Notably, ANU e-Press provides books free online, in HTML. A
good example relevant to the current discussion is Dr Peter Chen's book
"Electronic Engagement: A Guide for Public Sector Managers", which is
available in PDF, HTML for online use and a HTML version for mobile
devices: <http://epress.anu.edu.au/engage_citation.html>.

The Open Journal System, which I helped set up for the Australian
Computer Society and the International Federation for Information
Processing, has the ability to allow for publishing more than just PDF
and for online discussion. But I had to turn these features off, as the
research authors were not ready for them:
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/03/proposals-for-australian-research.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra