Comments on: Blogging a Book about Bio-Ontologies

By: Phil Lord

Phil Lord — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:12:28 +0000

Actually, one of the reasons for using a blog rather than a wiki is that the pages don’t change after they have been published and have permalinks. Of course, this isn’t an absolute, as the authors can change things, but essentially, we are working on the basis that once an article has hit the virtual shelves, it will remain essentially unchanged. In time, I expect we will just uncover the version history of the articles.

For my mind, the state of “finished-ness” of a book is not an advantage. Every book publication process I have ever been involved with “finished” means 2 or 3 years out-of-date. Most of the time, when I have a book chapter finally published, I can barely remember having written it, yet alone what’s in it. Why replicate this? The articles, when published, are peer reviewed and finished.

I agree with the ISBN or, better, a DOI, though. I don’t think these actually are any better technically, but from a social point of view they add something.

By: Ontogenesis: rapid reviewing and publishing of articles on semantics and ontologies « the mind wobbles

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:08:45 +0000

[...] it a blog, how the blog software is being used isn’t the way many people use it. And, though Duncan has called it “blogging a book”, this isn’t quite right either: while content, once completed, will not be changed, new [...]

By: Paul Gardner

Paul Gardner — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:44:58 +0000

Wikibooks seems like another good alternative:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

By: KnowledgeBlog: bloging a book about ontologies « Mikeleganaaranguren's Blog

KnowledgeBlog: bloging a book about ontologies « Mikeleganaaranguren's Blog — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:47:15 +0000

[...] I’m participating on an experiment about using blogs to create a book about bio-ontologies. Duncan Hull has a more in depths explanation. Dejar un [...]

By: Andrew Clegg

Andrew Clegg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:47:45 +0000

PS… Another advantage of books over blogs is permanence. Even if only a handful of copies are printed, if you’ve got an ISBN, and got into the British Library and the Library of Congress, then that’s a fair bit more stability than a collection of potentially transient URLs.

Not that I’m a particular advocate of turning trees into low-density non-searchable storage

Maybe online writing and review + limited print run + open access digital edition = publishing sweet spot.

By: Andrew Clegg

Andrew Clegg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:40:17 +0000

There’s another approach you didn’t list, which is writing a book but also releasing it as an open-access online version. This has the benefit of having a state of ‘finished-ness’ which an evolving resource like a blog might not ever reach, so one can cite a particular section or page [in a particular edition if necessary] and know that it won’t have changed when the time someone chases that link.

See e.g. http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/information-retrieval-book.html which is published by CUP — a good sign that trad publishers are open to this sort of thing.

Which approach is better? Well, there’s probably no fixed answer to that. Horses for courses, etc. Your approach has the benefit of transparent peer review, and people getting to see and comment on the material as it’s written.

Question: is it getting published as a proper book when it’s complete? Because that would give the best of both worlds.