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Transcript of Technology, workflow, and protocols in collaboratively edited digitical editions Juan Garcés...
Technology, workflow, and protocols
in collaboratively edited digitical editions
Juan GarcésBritish Library
eIS20 June 2007
Overview
• Technology– XML
• Workflow– quality control– quality improvement
• Protocols– author attribution– identification and retrieval
• What is ‘text’?
Technology
XML
• Text Encoding Initiative– open standard and guidelines– de facto standard for Humanities texts– crucial: consistency (ODD), separation of
critical perspective (?)
• challenge: OHCO data model only allows one hierarchy
• encoding disagreement• texts are more complex
Desideratum
• simple editing environment that allows:– encoding of heterogeneous aspects of the
text– multiple instances of the same ‘layer’
(disagreement)– analysis of interrelation between instances
and layers
Workflow
Quality control: peer review/refereeing
• uphold standards of academic disciplines• stricter application since the middle of the twentieth
century• anonymity (seldom ‘double-masked’) and independence• criticisms:
– slow process (sometimes iterative process)– susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy– lacks accountability– may be biased and inconsistent – failure to catch all fundamental errors– fraud
Quality control:wikipedia model
• mass-publication tool converted into mass-authoring tool• everyone can edit contents• mistakes are eradicated by community• advantages:
– timeliness– impressive workforce– democracy
• problems:– susceptible to spam and vandalism– always a work in progress– downplays individual contribution– deters participation by scholars
Quality control:hybrids
• alternatives to traditional peer review:– open peer review (reviewers’ names made known)– parallel open peer review– voluntary peer review (publication first)– extended peer review (beyond publication date)
• true hybrids:– content-appropriate marriage of community-oriented,
collaborative editing and scholarly editorial process
Quality improvement:sequential print publication
Edition 1
Manuscript/surrogate
Editor 1
Editor 2
Editor 3
Edition 2
Edition 3
improved Edition
Quality improvement:simultaneous digital publication
Editor 1
Editor 2
Editor 3
Manuscript/surrogate
improved Edition
Editionimproved
Protocols
Author attribution• social, legal, and technical genealogy
– social: 18th c. introduced a new concept of individualised authorship based on the idea of a creative genius working alone - the “privileged moment of individualization in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences” (Foucault)
– legal: “1710 Copyright Act”, or “Act for the Encouragement of Learning and the Securing the Property of Copies of Books to the Rightful Owners Thereof”
– technological: coincides with the perfection of the movable types printing press• essential for evaluating professional output of Humanists (grant application,
tenure, etc.)• solutions for collaborative ‘authoring’:
– hierarchy of authors (lead, assistant, etc. – pre-assigned?)– editing profile (contribution broken down into modular or granular input – how to
quantify quality?)– peer assessment
• for any solution eeds to be accepted in professional evaluation scenarios!
The Canonical Text Services (CTS) Protocol
• developed by Neel Smith in conjunction with the Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington, DC)
• defines a network service for identifying and working with texts
• permanence and citabilityof scholarly published works – they are “works possessing an explicitly identified edition and explicitly identified citation scheme, that can be irrevocably and identically replicated”
• digital library distributed objects accessible via a suite of network services (simple identification and retrieval)
The Canonical Text Services (CTS) Protocol
• hierarchical TextInventory (following FRBR, includes identification of how to validate a document):– TextGroup+ (author, collection)– Work+ (notional)– Edition/Translation* (specific versions)– Exemplar* (specific physical copies)
• hierarchical model for citation of sections of a work (recursively nesting <citation>, mapping XPath expression)
• requests– requests expressed as URL parameters– replies formatted as well-formed XML – requests: GetCapabilities, GetWorks, GetValidReff,
GetDocumentMetadata, GetPassage, DownloadText
Desiderata
• impermanence (time stamps, editions)
• new entities (data repository vs. VRE scenario)