h a l f b a k e r yThis ain't rocket surgery.
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While most of the web is written in HTML, scientists
continue to use LaTeX and PDFs for publications. It's the
closest to a paper in modern days you can get.
However, there is no such "paper" to get general review
about the overall advances in science, which you could
sit
back and read like
a newspaper. Instead, many use
HTML-
based services like Slashdot, Twitter, Google Plus,
Google
News, etc.
So, the idea is such a news daily in PDF, which
summarizes
the new publications by placing them into easily
distinguishable categories (so the purposes or goals of
the
researches are easy to understand even if the title is
hard),
yet with original scientific language, and with the HTTP
links to original papers.
[link]
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I don't see the need for this (as a practicing
scientist). I can see plenty of daily news-type
science updates on the web - why is better to have
them in PDF format? |
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// why is better to have them in PDF format? // |
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to make people who like science news get used to accessing scientific literature seamlessly. Or.. should all the PDFs be converted to some beautiful HTML format, supporting comments and advanced features, such as forking? |
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I'm not entirely sure what the objective is. I mean I'd like to get an in-depth report on some stories, without having to endure page headers and footers, hot and cold running advertisements, page breaks after a paragraph or two, et cetera, but it sounds like a wibni. |
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//to make people who like science news get used to
accessing scientific literature seamlessly.// |
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I still don't get it. If a non-scientist is interested in
science, there are plenty of science news websites
and fora. Why is it better/easier for them to
download a PDF? |
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If they want to progress to access the original
research, then links from a news story in HTML can
take them to the literature (at least, any parts of the
literature that are open access). |
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As for [FT]'s comment that advert-free would be
nice, well, yes - but a PDF publication is going to be
no more advert-free than an HTML one. |
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Hmm. No. There's a whole load of journals that have rich
format web publications as standard. Some journals are
going the extra mile with video abstracts or schematic
abstracts, largely the concept of a "paper" is now
abstract.
For me at least, PDFs are for printing. Why print? Well,
there's a lot to reading a good paper in your field. A range
of emotions which swirl around the central theme of "you
complete b@#tards! I could have done that!" with side
eddy's of "well, that was clever, I'm stealing that
approach" and "there's no way in the world you know
what you're doing with that technique... if you're not
walking around nervously gibbering about calcium
concentration, you can't make ICM" |
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Anyhow, they're best taken to locations that sell beer. |
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A lot of on line science magazines out there. |
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