The Exchange, December 2009

the Exchange

Issue 16(4), December 2009

In this issue:

A brave new workflow for the composition of scientific, technical, and medical journals

by Louise Adam (loua@assochq.org)

In 2006, the publications department of the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS; www.fass.org) was using the Miles 33 composition system and LaTeX to produce six peer-reviewed journals (four monthly, one quarterly, and one bimonthly). In addition, the department used InDesign to produce program and abstract books for conferences hosted on behalf of our member and client professional societies, as well as proceedings, manuals, brochures, marketing materials, and other print and online products for members and clients.

The Miles 33 composition system was a batch-pagination workhorse and churned out composed journal pages at a steady pace for us. However, the overall workflow surrounding the composition system was outdated and inefficient: the tagging was a manual process done by freelance typecoders with specialized skills, and the limited pool of local typecoders resulted in manuscripts being out of our office for up to a week, and sometimes longer if a freelancer went on vacation. A further concern was that our legacy content was available in only two forms: Miles 33 files and PDF output files. The long-term accessibility and usability of our back content, our reliance on a workflow that depended on highly specialized typecoders and compositors, and a desire to deliver online-ready files to our online journal host moved us to explore an XML-based workflow.

Batch pagination versus desktop publishing

We spent six months evaluating several options, including XyEnterprise’s XML Print Publisher and PTC’s (formerly Arbortext’s) Advanced Print Publisher systems. The XML Print Publisher and Advanced Print Publisher systems have been on the market for several years and would have met our requirements for an XML-based composition process. However, similar to the Miles system, both of these systems would have involved some manual tagging in a process similar to that in the workflow we were trying to move away from. Both systems require some technical expertise in XML and scripting for implementation and use, and offer little flexibility in terms of tweaking design and layout on the fly. Desktop publishing software (such as InDesign or Quark), on the other hand, traditionally offers just that design flexibility and ease of use but has, to this point, poor native support for XML. A new option for publishers—Typéfi Publish (www.typefi.com)—promised to combine batch pagination with the flexible design capabilities of InDesign in an XML workflow. We spent several weeks evaluating Typéfi and were impressed with its ease of use and flexibility. However, the company’s first major customer was Lonely Planet, the publisher of travel guidebooks. Although their travel guides are leaders in that sector, the layout and content are not like those of scientific, technical, and medical journals, which frequently publish datasets, computer code, tables with complex rendering requirements, intricate mathematical equations, and figures and graphics. Could Typéfi Publish meet our rigorous requirements? We conducted a proof-of-concept study using XML from our own content (kindly provided by Inera, www.inera.com), and were convinced that we had found our composition system.

Getting to XML

Although purists might argue that an XML workflow should begin with content creation in XML, it simply isn’t feasible in scholarly publishing. Authors use the tools they have available—usually Microsoft Word, but occasionally WordPerfect or LaTeX. Web-based manuscript submission and review systems typically accept Word files and create PDFs for peer review. (A few systems allow submission of TeX or LaTeX files, particularly for math and physics journals, but more on LaTeX later.)

We knew we needed XML before we reached the composition stage, however, and for that we turned to the eXtyles software from Inera. eXtyles is a Word plug-in that combines XML creation and export with a suite of macro-based editorial tools. It is specifically designed to facilitate publishing workflows in which content starts life in Microsoft Word and XML is needed for composition. Most importantly, eXtyles allows editors to work in a familiar environment without ever having to interact with or see the XML “under the hood.” That’s a big plus for most editorial types!

We spent about 6 months implementing the eXtyles software, with most of that time spent customizing the editorial (auto-redact) rules to meet our house style. Auto-redact rules automate routine editorial clean-up and cover everything from changing British to American spellings, editing standard units to house style, and formatting statistical terms (p-value or P-value?). Then, we determined what paragraph and character styles we needed in our journals. eXtyles uses a customer-specific set of Word styles to apply XML tagging to different elements in an article, including the article title, authors, affiliations, corresponding author, abstract, text, equations, table titles, table column heads, table body, table footnotes, figure captions, and references.

The software also includes a comprehensive suite of tools for checking references and citations. Journal citations in the reference list of an article are parsed and tagged according to house style. Then, eXtyles uses fuzzy matching to find the citation in the PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) or CrossRef (www.crossref.org/) databases and returns a query (inserted as a Word comment) if it cannot find the journal title or if it finds a discrepancy in the first author’s name. Links to the PubMed or CrossRef citation are inserted so that the editor can quickly locate the citation and verify or correct the information. Next, eXtyles runs a citation-matching process that identifies every in-text citation in the paper (whether your style is name-date or one of several numbered citation formats) and matches it to the corresponding citation in the reference list. Discrepancies are identified by inserting a comment in the text or in the reference list. Many queries can be quickly resolved by correcting a spelling error in the text or references. Reference and citation checking is probably the single most important feature in eXtyles, at least from a copyeditor’s perspective.

Once we had customized and implemented eXtyles, we began exporting valid, well-formed XML from our edited manuscripts. eXtyles offers many tagging and export options; we chose the U.S. National Library of Medicine (http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/) journals document type definition (DTD) with the Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support (CALS) table model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALS_(DOD), a standard for representing tables in SGML and XML. Export from eXtyles includes a validation check so that errors in the XML can be corrected at the final step.

Implementing Typéfi

With good XML in hand, it was time to start work on the Typéfi implementation. Typéfi Publish leverages open-standard technologies such as XML, XSL, and Web services (e.g., SOAP, the simple object-access protocol) and industry-standard applications (Word and InDesign) to deliver a robust solution for dynamic publishing. It is a design-driven platform that pulls XML into an InDesign template to create richly formatted documents essentially at the touch of a button. For users who don’t have eXtyles, Typéfi Publish includes a similar Word plug-in called Typéfi Writer to create XML from Word files.

FASS was the first scholarly publisher to implement Typéfi Publish, and significant time was spent by the Typéfi engineers to handle our exacting requirements for tables, graphics, and mathematical equations. The InDesign/Typéfi template is the key: this template design maps the XML content to specific containers within the template (e.g., title bar, abstract, footnote box, main story, one-column table, two-column figure). Our composition staff, which had little InDesign experience up to this point, spent a couple of days of training learning how to create a template for each journal. Several weeks were then spent refining and tweaking each journal’s template until we were satisfied with the output.

As we transitioned to the Typéfi workflow, we ran two workflows in parallel: manuscripts were edited in Word with eXtyles and XML was exported. Each manuscript was then composed in both Miles 33 and Typéfi. We spent several weeks having the Typéfi proofs closely proofread alongside the Miles-generated proofs. We were happy with the output, with only minor adjustments needed, and one journal issue was entirely composed in Typéfi—success! We followed with the remaining five journals the next month. We completed the full transition for six journals ahead of schedule, under budget, and without the need for overtime, while running parallel workflows for several weeks. Of course, much of that success was due to the efforts of the dedicated team of editorial and production staff we have at FASS.

Mathematics? No problem!

One of our bigger challenges was to transition the one journal that used LaTeX for composition to the eXtyles-Typéfi workflow. The first problem was how to handle LaTeX content from authors. For that we turned to an inexpensive and robust little tool called GrindEQ (www.grindeq.com/). GrindEQ has a host of conversion options, including LaTeX (and variations) to Word and back as well as MathType to Word’s Equation Editor. Our editorial assistant converts LaTeX manuscripts into Word format, and those manuscripts can then be processed using eXtyles. The larger issue for that journal was its heavy and complex math content, for which we now use MathType from Design Science (www.dessci.com). As you may know, MathType is the professional version of the equation editor built into pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Word. MathType plays well with other programs; it can be fully integrated with diverse applications and software, including Quark, InDesign, Wikipedia, Excel, Mathematica, and Maple, and it supports TeX and LaTeX input. In our new workflow, complex equations are created in MathType by our technical editors (if they were not already supplied in that format by authors) and exported as graphics files (.eps format). Typéfi then pulls in the .eps files and places them according to the callouts inserted in the XML file.

Composing an article in Typéfi

Today, our composition process begins with an edited Word file. Using the export function in eXtyles, the compositor exports and validates the XML and then the article moves to production. Next, the compositor selects the article for composition, and the Typéfi engine pulls the XML into the template for that journal, adds the graphics files (art and math), and creates an InDesign file and a PDF; this process takes 3 to 5 minutes for an average article. The compositor then opens the InDesign file to check the placement of tables, figures, and mathematics, and makes any adjustments necessary (using the full suite of InDesign tools).

Because the design and overall layout of a journal article don’t change much from issue to issue, Typéfi’s template-based system is ideal. Although books and other one-time products tend to have unique formats, template creation is not an arduous task for an experienced InDesign user, so creating a new template for each such project is also an efficient approach to automating layout for long documents.

One year later

A year after completing our transition, the time from editing a manuscript to sending a PDF (galley) proof to the author has been cut in half. The number of pages published in our journals jumped by about 10% in 2009 with little impact on our composition staff. We have eliminated the labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive typecoding process. Authors now receive their proofs within about 5 weeks of acceptance. We deliver PDF and XML files to our online journal hosts, reducing the per-page conversion costs for the full-text versions. Most importantly, quality has not been compromised. We now also use eXtyles in many of our non-journal publications (with a traditional manual InDesign layout) and hope to start using Typéfi for more of our book projects in the future. When implementing a major workflow change like this, it is important to change the old processes to optimize the new tools rather than trying to force the new tools to follow the old path. Although there were sleepless nights early in the process and some challenges along the way, it is truly satisfying to see the improvements we have made.

If you are looking for a highly flexible, scalable, automated composition system based on XML, I encourage you to explore the eXtyles-Typéfi combination. Customer support from Inera and Typéfi has been outstanding, which is one of the reasons I unreservedly recommend their products.

Louise Adam (loua@assochq.org) is a former cytogeneticist and current technical editor for the Federation of Animal Science Societies. She was lucky enough to be involuntarily volunteered to lead the FASS publication team to a new editorial and composition workflow. Along the way, she accidentally learned more about XML than is safe for a self-avowed “word nerd”.

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Editorial:  Outliers—the forgotten 5%

by Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)

You'll often see scientists make an interesting choice when it comes time to interpret their data: they focus on the main results, and ignore any minor results that don't conform. These inconsistencies are often called outliers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers) because choosing that word helps the scientists see them as "lying outside" the other data. This makes it easier to attribute these outlying results to experimental error, whether due to human imprecision or due to the presence of subtle factors that weren't detected when the experiment was designed but that nonetheless affected the results. If they're errors, you can then ignore them.

Even if these outliers are real, not just errors, they probably aren't truly representative of the majority of the things being studied. Scientists often frame these things in terms of statistical probabilities, and focus on regions of probability such as the 95% "confidence interval" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval): if you'll pardon my doing a gross injustice to the idea of a confidence interval, the goal is to focus on the 95% of the results that are most significant. (Please treat that description as nothing more than a metaphor to make the concept more approachable.) The logic follows the prevailing scientific dogma, namely that the universe follows consistent rules and that close examination will reveal those rules. Once the rules are known, then events proceed from a given starting point, like clockwork, in accordance with those rules. Anything that reaches a different endpoint must have had a different starting point from the other things being studied, and can therefore follow a different path. In botany, for instance, 95 out of 100 plants may respond identically to an experimental treatment because they were in the same state of health and had nearly identical physiological parameters at the start of the experiment; the other 5 may have inadvertently been stressed by receiving insufficient water or being handled unusually roughly—or maybe they're just having a bad day.

(Un)fortunately, sometimes the 5% that follow different paths and produce outliers are important. Alexander Fleming is generally credited with the discovery of the antibiotic effects of penicillin, and his discovery is traditionally described as an accident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin): a culture dish became contaminated, and although this dish was unique in its contamination (thus, an outlier) and might have been simply thrown away by a less alert researcher, Fleming saw something that made him preserve it for further study. In truth, the antibiotic properties of certain bread moulds (probably ones in the penicillin family) were known centuries before Fleming's experiments, so it may be more accurate to describe his finding as the rediscovery of penicillin. Be that as it may, in the context of the present essay, this illustrates why it's not always wise to ignore the outliers.

For scientific communicators, this scientific attitude towards outliers has equally important consequences. First, and extending the metaphor of the confidence interval further than is really safe, we generally choose to focus on the 95% of our audience with identical needs, because they represent the majority of the information needs we must satisfy. But second, the needs of a few key individuals or a few rare situations (the outliers) are sometimes too important to ignore. When we form hypotheses about the needs of our audience, or actually survey them to learn their needs, it's natural and appropriate to focus on majority needs, but whenever we encounter rare situations or rare audience members (outliers), we should pause to ask ourselves a few questions about those rarities:

An example from my own career illustrates the point. Many years ago, I had an opportunity to survey the readers of the reports I edited for a former employer, with the goal of learning how to improve these publications so they would better meet the reader's needs. The reports were based on field studies to solve operational problems in forestry, and although the investigative approach followed the scientific model, the readers of the resulting reports were not scientists and were far more interested in what the results would mean for them than in how we obtained the results. Thus, the overwhelming majority told us that they did not read the Methods section, in which we described the study approach. (Our inclusion of a Methods section stemmed from the original model for these reports, which was an uncritical adoption of the model for a scientific journal paper.)

Based on this result, it was tempting to simply discard the entire Methods section because we were (in theory) wasting time writing information that few people read. But in practice, some people (including our own researchers) did read this section and found it useful, often because they wanted to repeat the study themselves. These people needed a clear description of how to perform the study—the reason why the Methods section is so detailed in a journal paper—so it seemed that we could not entirely eliminate the section. As a compromise, we chose to retain the Methods section, but with greatly reduced detail. But where we felt it was relevant, we also preserved detailed descriptions of the methods in an "internal" report (that would generally not be distributed to our audience) so that these details would be available, both to the few audience members who requested this information and to future researchers, as a form of organizational memory. Because our approach to knowledge transfer emphasized ongoing personal contact with our audience, we made it clear to our audience that they should feel free to contact us to request a copy of that internal report or to request assistance designing similar studies.

In the field of scientific and technological risk communication, outliers are even more important. Consider, for example, the operation of a factory that uses or produces toxic chemicals. For the majority of that factory's operational life, it will function precisely as it was designed to do: safely, and with little or no damage caused by those chemicals. But because no complex device designed by humans is ever perfect, and because accidents, unexpected mechanical failures, and even extreme events such as terrorist attacks can disrupt the factory's normal operation, risk managers must consider the possibility that the toxins might be released and must plan accordingly. In effect, they must not only document the normal, routine operation of the factory (the 95%), but must also look for outliers such as industrial accidents (the 5%), and plan accordingly. For example, someone must document the emergency response procedures.

More interestingly for scientific communicators, outliers may indicate a situation where we have an opportunity to identify changes in practices that would reduce the risk of adverse events, much as STC members in the computer industry report bugs and interface glitches to computer programmers so that they can fix the problems. We may also discover opportunities to act as audience advocates by finding ways to increase communication and understanding between our employer and their audience. In my personal example, we found ways to improve communication by eliminating useless information from our reports while preserving that information elsewhere for those who needed it. In the risk communication example, we might translate between the managers of a factory and members of the community downwind from that factory who might be affected by industrial accidents. There's always a risk that by revealing information about the possibilities of disaster to the community, we will increase their fear. But the literature on risk communication has also shown convincingly that honest and open communication to improve understanding, and demonstrating concern for the needs of those who might be affected by a factory's operations by addressing their concerns in operating and emergency-response plans, can lead to constructive, mutually respectful dialogue instead of the confrontations that have often characterized relationships between industry and the general public.

Particularly for those of us who were trained as scientists, there's a strong temptation to ignore outliers and focus on the main results. But as I hope I've shown, that's a limited perspective that often leads us to ignore important, if less common, needs. Next time you begin developing documentation or a communication plan related to a matter of science and technology, ask yourself whether you've done an adequate job of identifying and responding to "the needs of the 5%". The answer may surprise you.

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Bulletproof: how to armor-plate your work

by Bob Johnson (wordfixer@yahoo.com)
Previously published in Science Editor 28(3):09. May/June 2005.

Proof n. Trial printed material that is made to be checked and corrected.
Proof adj. Fully or successfully resistant; impervious, as in a bulletproof vest.

In culinary arts, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In language arts, the proof of the writing is in the reading (excuse the word play and bad metaphor).

Error-free word work is hard to achieve, but readers expect and deserve it. Moreover, errors detract from the reputation of writ­ers and the presses that host them. It is the editor’s duty to look after all three—reader, writer, and company.

Here are some tools I use that help me “bulletproof” my work, plus some observa­tions from one editor’s foxhole.

Fact-checking

The quality of documents rests on the twin pillars of precise language and accurate infor­mation. Therefore, proper quality control demands both language-checking and fact-checking.

A plug: The Fact Checker’s Bible (Sarah Harrison Smith, Anchor Books, 2004) belongs on every editor’s shelf. The author heads the fact-checking department of the New York Times Magazine.

TFCB is packed with useful techniques for fact-checking, information on authoritative sources, and examples of the travail that can attend its proper execution. The author recites embarrassing instances of fact-check­ing left undone or gone awry and the conse­quences thereof, and offers this terse counsel: “If each reader begins to trust the publication a little less with every error, the eventual cost will be its reputation.”

The Web site of the American Press Institute, with its “Journalist’s Toolbox” link, is a fine online springboard for fact-checking: <www.americanpressinstitute.org/content/3899.cfm>.

Proofreading—hard copy

I advocate proofreading every job both on paper and electronically. Although I’d like to offer several point­ers regarding hard-copy proofreading, space limits me to the one that I deem most important: Get a drafting table or editor’s desk with a capacious tilting surface on which you can survey many pages of your work at once. The broad view will permit your eye to see errors, textual relationships, and formatting discontinuities that might otherwise escape it.

Proofreading—on-screen

In proofreading, your mind is not your friend. The following technique will force your eye to see what is really there, rather than what your mind “wants” it to see. It presumes the use of a color monitor and Microsoft Word software.

Caution: Do not try this with your original; save it elsewhere.

  1. Convert each single space to five spaces; this moves words so far apart that it forces your eye to halt on each word (try it, it works).
  2. Convert the page from white background to blue. (Open the Tools menu and select Options, select the General tab, then select the option "Blue background, white text".)
  3. Change the text color to a pleasing but vivid shade (I like bright green).
  4. Change the font. If you have been look­ing at a serif font, convert it to sans-serif (I like Verdana); if a sans-serif font, con­vert it to serif (I like Georgia).
  5. Establish 2-inch margins to “columnize” the text. (That is, narrow the column of text instead of using the full width of the window.)
  6. Zoom the text to 150%.

Where errors lurk

The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage (p. 761) enumerates “types of copy that are often fraught with proofread­ing perils”:

... to which I would add a few demon’s lairs of my own:

Conclusion: the most important advice of all

When you think your work is bulletproof, always subject it to a final scrutiny with a “fresh pair of eyes”. (We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.)

Chuckle of the month

From the cover letter of an applicant for an editorial job: “Strict attention to detail is a must in all apsects of my work.”

Bob Johnson (wordfixer@yahoo.com) writes the “Word Hawk” column for Science Editor, the bimonthly publication of the Council of Science Editors (CSE). Following university training as a biologist, Mr. Johnson discovered a love for writing and editing, holding senior positions at Annual Reviews, Frost & Sullivan, SRI International, and Applied Biosystems. He is a member of the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS). He also has a degree in French. In 2000, Mr. Johnson was language arts editor for the statewide California High-School Exit Examination (CAHSEE). He was a reviewer of the AMA Manual of Style, 10th Edition (2007), and the CSE’s Scientific Style and Format, Seventh Edition (2006). Currently self-employed, his recent work includes editing two books: Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? (Pera 2008) and the two-volume Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions (Greenberg 2007).

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Book review: The Myths of Innovation

[Berkun, S. 2007. O’Reilly Media, Inc., Sebastopol, CA. ISBN 978-0-596- 52705-1. 176 p., including index. US$24.99.]
Previously published in Technical Communication 55(3):304-305, August 2008.

by James Morgan (jamjmorg@verizon.net)

Do you hold onto any of the popular myths about technological innovation? Scott Berkun congenially identifies common misunderstandings attached to innovation, explains why they came to be, and offers to “explore and teach from the truth” (p. xii).

He resists offering a concise definition of innovation but rather approaches the issues of innovation in an exploratory, yet engaging manner. For example, Berkun does not distinguish between “innovation” and “invention”. In his retelling of innovation stories, inventors are really innovators who borrow from others’ ideas and rely on teams of supporters.

Berkun also resists clearly defining his audience. He addresses his readership as “anyone interested in how we got where we are”, as people who want to be innovators, and as people who “don’t want to be hit over the head with jargon and statistics” (p. xii-xiii). However, the book’s attributes narrow its audience: Those who already have a drive to be entrepreneurial innovators would want more in-depth research, as would scholars researching the topic. Because Berkun has done the research for us and has reported it in a witty, succinct package, the audience that would most benefit from this book are people who are pressed for time and who have the need to understand how innovators think and work. This includes project managers (Berkun’s background), technical writers, and marketers of technology who have the need to rethink commonly held assumptions about innovators and innovation.

The author effectively arranges his arguments in 10 chapters using thought-provoking chapter titles, such as “People love new ideas” and “Your boss knows more about innovation than you”—two of the myths that Berkun tackles. Each chapter can be read independently, but there is a progression of the chapters as he removes innovation from the realm of wishful thinking to the unpredictability of reality.

Berkun uses relevant, interesting examples that span the ages from ancient Rome to modern-day Silicon Valley. When his explorations into technology and history get too deep, he tends to crack a joke before moving on. Although the book lacks enough depth for academic scholarship, it covers a breadth of secondary research, citing many known and respected sources. In an interesting offering, Berkun lists his references, but orders them based on the number of times he used them. Also much to his credit, Berkun includes an annotated bibliography, a practice more authors should use to let readers assess the author’s understanding of the topic and his sources.

The Myths of Innovation is a collection of Berkun’s insights, laced with humor, gained from his experiences and research. The book is not about debunking myths but rather tests assumptions that could be roadblocks to our understanding of technological developments and hence our careers. As the author reveals, these roadblocks are often the result of the limitations of human nature and our grappling with the ever-changing world of technology. By challenging pervasive assumptions such as “the best ideas always win” and “innovation is always good”, he shows that we need wisdom above and beyond any innovative technology.

James Morgan (jamjmorg@verizon.net) has been in the nonprofit field for 15 years, with experience in management, communications, and fund raising. In 2008 he is earned a Master of Science in English from Utah State University.

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Book review: Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice

[Hess, C.; Ostrom, E. eds. 2007. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. ISBN 978-0-262-08357-7. 367 p., including index. US$36.00.]
Previously published in Technical Communication 55(3):295-296, August 2008.

by Tom Warren (thomas.warren@okstate.edu)

The metaphor of a “knowledge commons” derives from the idea that the public holds certain things in common: water, air, forests, land, and so on. Beginning in the mid-15th century in England, however, governments and private individuals gained exclusive control of many of these things by introducing measures that effectively barred open access.

One would think that nowadays there is a lot of knowledge “out there” readily available at the click of a mouse button. Search for anything, and you can get hundreds, even thousands of hits. If this kind of information is that readily available, what’s the objection raised in such forums as the Workshop on Scholarly Communication as a Commons, Conference on the Public Domain, and Digital Library of the Commons? The answer lies in the kind of information that is freely available; typically it is not research-based, peer-reviewed literature.

Instead of the English aristocracy making a grab for land and power, large conglomerates in the United States are acquiring scholarly publications—the journals where academics in the sciences and the humanities are publishing the results of their research. As companies acquire these journals, they are erecting barriers of high prices and strict licensing requirements that effectively prevent all but a small percentage of the population from gaining access to the research.

The idea that researchers and scholars, who produce materials as part of their jobs, should make those materials freely available is a highly controversial subject. Journal publishing is big business, with ever increasing demands for profit. Publishers pay nothing for the materials that they publish, and, in the sciences, even charge the author for publishing their materials. Once they have these materials in their journals, they impose high subscription costs and licensing fees to make their money. Of course, this explanation oversimplifies a highly complex situation that at times becomes emotional. A constant tension exists between the publishers wanting to make money and the libraries that face rising costs and shrinking budgets and must meet their patrons’ demands. And you can even find the same problem of restricting access to information unless a fee is paid in professional societies who are looking to enhance their revenue streams.

Hess and Ostrom’s anthology addresses many of these issues in three groups of essays: “Studying the knowledge commons”, “Protecting the knowledge commons”, and “Building new knowledge commons”. Topics of the 12 essays include the history of the knowledge commons problem, several solutions involving open access modeled on open-source software, the benefits of the public having unlimited access to this knowledge, the legal issues involved in intellectual property rights, and especially the question of authors profiting from their work. The essayists also discuss how research funded by the government through tax money is being swept into these enclosures, forcing taxpayers to pay again to access it.

The argument for establishing a knowledge commons cannot be easily summarized. To oversimplify, a considerable amount of material is finding its way into print and electronic form and is quickly being absorbed by for-profit conglomerates who prevent open access to it. The price to access some scientific information, for example, ranges into five figures per year for a subscription. Only the most well-endowed libraries can afford to subscribe, and licensing agreements force them to restrict access to that material to faculty members, students, and researchers who have received special permission. Most public libraries cannot afford to subscribe to most research journals, further limiting public access to the knowledge.

These essays present both sides of the case for a knowledge commons, making counterarguments and offering what they believe opponents of the commons would say. The position the authors take has serious merit that academic scholars should consider. Studies reported by the essayists indicate that the majority of the actual authors of the research have no objection to open access. After all, they have received their grants, promotions, and raises based on their publications and have free access though their universities’ libraries. Even promotion and tenure committees are beginning to drop the prejudice against e-journals that has prevailed for years. In fact, there are now some prestigious e-journals in biology that are open access. If academic authors can gain access through their university libraries, including interlibrary loan, then what’s the problem? The essayists respond that academic authors represent a small percentage of the public who want access to this information. For example, many independent scholars not affiliated with a university have no access to the material, yet they want to pursue their scholarly interests. And why should taxpayers have to pay twice for the results of government-funded research? At the heart of the open access argument is the need for an informed population who have educated themselves using freely accessible knowledge.

I am not sure how many technical communicators are interested in the problems faced by access to scholarly information, but certainly academics are, because it is through their efforts that most of the scholarly materials are produced. Technical communicators who draw on the research literature for their work should find this collection of essays a worthwhile investment. It is a real bargain at the price.

Tom Warren (thomas.warren@okstate.edu) is an STC Fellow, a winner of the Jay R. Gould Award for teaching excellence, and professor of English (technical writing) at Oklahoma State University, where he established the BA, MA, and PhD technical writing programs. He is also past president of INTECOM and serves as guest professor at the University of Paderborn, Germany.

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Fun on the Web

Good news (sort of) for brunettes

Conventional wisdom states that blonde women capture the hero by the end of the film, but science has once again helped us debunk a pernicious modern myth. Researchers from Cleveland State University, at great risk to self and reputation, have carefully analyzed the characteristics of the key women in the first 20 James Bond films, and found that the ideal Bond girl has long, dark hair, an American accent, and a weapon. On the negative side, the Bond films can hardly be invoked as a model for enlightened gender relations. For more details of the study, see the 7 June 2009 issue of London's Daily Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/5460969/James-Bond-prefers-brunettes-research-says.html).

Tip of the hat to News of the Weird (www.newsoftheweird.com).

A feast for the eyes

One of the very cool things about science is that new discoveries await each time we try to look at the world in a new way. This is true whether we expand our vision to the largest frontiers imaginable, as in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html), the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's image gallery (www.noao.edu/image_gallery/), and dozens of other similar sites, or whether we narrow our focus to the smallest things a microscope can reveal, as at the MicroAngela gallery of electron microscope images (www5.pbrc.hawaii.edu/microangela/) and the Molecular Expressions site (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu), which also provides details of how the images were acquired.

CSE guide booklets

The Council of Science Editors has announced its series of "guide booklets" (www.councilscienceeditors.org/publications/guideline.cfm). These short publications are intended to provide a quick overview of the key points of various  processes of interest to scientific communicators. Current titles include The Publication Process at Biomedical Journals, Levels of Technical Editing, Posters and Poster Sessions, Editing Science Graphs, and Editing Grant Proposals.

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Parting thoughts

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."—Nikola Tesla

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"Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution."—Edward Teller

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"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority."—Thomas H. Huxley

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"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."—Flannery O'Connor

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"With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life."—P.J. O'Rourke

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"People like to imagine that because all our mechanical equipment moves so much faster, that we are thinking faster, too."—Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

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"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children."—Hosea4:6

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Contact and copyright information

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Kathie Gorski (kgorski@execpc.com)

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