Structured Commons
Organization
The Structured Commons project is to develop and promote the Structured Commons model and network, as a new way for scholars to "do" academic publishing. See the Mission Statement for an overview of the goals.
The strategy to achieve this is illustrated by the following figure:
In short, the initiative is dual-headed:
- a model-centered approach based on advocacy, tailored to audiences sensitive to innovation in science evaluation (how to best perform peer review), innovation in long-term archival and persistence of the citation network, competition with the legacy publishing industry, and progressive evolution of the sociological aspects around science (eg. alternate performance metrics).
- a technology-centered approach based on gradual adoption via "grassroots" tooling initiatives, tailored to audiences sensitive to the practical organization of conferences, workshops and new-generation journals (eg. how to implement open peer review), peer-to-peer legal distribution of academic works, structured re-indexing of legacy document repositories, review-based search & filtering, and the cryptographic web-of-trust.
The initial drive to achieve this initiative will be provided by the Structured Commons Technical Steering Committee (SCTSC). This self-appointed, non-profit group of technology-minded scholars will push the SC agenda and temporarily hold the responsibility for coordinating the definition of the SC model and network protocols.
Structured Commons Technical Steering Committee
Mission:
- to advocate the Structured Commons vision and discuss its development;
- to maintain a set of "core" specification documents and reference/example tool implementations;
- to publish said documentation and code in the public domain.
Current members:
- Sebastian Altmeyer, University of Amsterdam, NL
- Roy Bakker, University of Amsterdam, NL
- Roeland Douma, University of Amsterdam, NL
- Raphael Poss, University of Amsterdam, NL
- Mark Thompson, LUMC, NL
Duration: eventually, this steering committee is intended to be superseded by a network of organizations that follow the Structured Commons model and support the Structured Commons network.
Membership: membership to the SCTSC is free but candidate members should be affiliated with a recognized academic institution, provide evidence of basic expertise with the dynamics of academic publishing (including, but not limited to, an established publication record), and "opted in" by existing members.
Works maintained by the SCTSC
- Structured Commons Enhancement Proposals, as set of documents that describe and specify the Structured Commons model and network.
- Example tools, libraries and utilities for authors and users of Structured Commons objects and documents.