Review papers

Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?

Not only review papers, but a lot more...

The twin of imechanica in biology and bio-engineering is from MIT !!

See the ideas discussed at http://dssl.mne.psu.edu/nsfcdi/index.php/CDI_Pre-Proposal .

Wikipedia has a rule that no original research is to be posted there.  However, Wikiversity can be used for that purpose (and possibly Wikisource). 

My own thoughts after exploring the wiki world for a while is that creating a brand is nontrivial.  Unless a mechanics wiki develops brand recognition it will continue to be a bit player in further developments.  But one has to start somewhere.

I've seen a lot of words on iMechanica but very little action.  Clearly, Zhigang does not have the time or the inclination to create another wiki based mechanics forum.  It's upto those of you who are throwing up new ideas to actually implement them and show us that they work. 

The only useful purpose that iMechanica serves for me is entertainment. As I, like Plato in his "Republic", "..keep holiday, like those lazy-minded men who are wont to feast themselves on their own thoughts when they are travelling alone."  Continuing Plato's quote, "Such men, you know, do not wait to discover the means of attaining the object of their desires.  They leave that question alone to save themselves the weariness of deliberating about what is practicable and what is not."

-- Biswajit 

What people need to realize here is that wikis, blogs, and content management systems are very different things although they are all starting to gain features of one another (like the continued convergence of CAD and FEA software).  However, (like CAD and FEA software) they are focused on doing different things.

Wikis are terrible at organizing discussions.  Just click on the Discussion tab on any popular Wikipedia page.  Discussions are a very distant secondary functionality for a wiki.  Blogging software such as Drupal is designed to primarily for discussions.  Thus, Drupal was certainly the correct choice for iMechanica.

The wiki concept is great for collecting and tabulating knowledge.  That's not really what goes on here.  I obviously think wikis will play a huge role in the future of technical publishing (which is why I've put so much effort into it).  As I proposed to NSF, dynamic review articles are a great place to start (and useful to the community).  The problem is that MediaWiki is really not designed for technical publishing.  That's why I've been working on writing extensions that turn MediaWiki into an online LaTeX environment (sort of).  This is pretty close to finished.  However, there are tons of other issues involved.  Such as assigning credit and developing a good cataloging and indexing system.  Not to mention that many people use Word to write their papers and will want to fancy front-end on the system before they'll even think of using it.  Plus, an entire peer review system and 'acceptance' system needs to be set up.  None of this is that difficult to do, it's just time consuming.  And getting something working and making it user friendly and 'idiot proof' are completely different things.  My hope is to have a descent 'alpha-level' system up by the end of summer.  It will be functional but not feature complete, and certainly not bug free.

Biswajit & Eric

these 2 messages are to the point.  (this incidentally is a problem of blogs like imechanica, there is no filter, and very good messages get mixed with confused ones).

Some technical questions because I confess I am ignorant in this matter (and in many others)

1) can we try a WIKI section within imechanica, despite the latter is drupal?   Can a wiki engine run under a drupal general framework?

2) if so, can Eric "beta test" his latex-compiler for wiki within imechanica ?

Then, of course you can push forward your new attempts of funding.

Obviously the two systems can be integrated using hyperlink (but that's not really tight integration).  I'm not sure what you're thinking with this integration.  My vision which is more towards a publishing system with discussion threads for each publication, would essentially use Drupal for the discussion engine in MediaWiki.  Thus, instead of the Discussion tab in MediaWiki leading to a chaotic wiki-based discussion, it will lead to a Drupal discussion thread.  I'm not sure why one would want a wiki embedded in a Drupal discussion.  Although you could certainly add a link to a wiki article.  Now, not all discussions need to be about articles so I see a place for a Drupal-only site (i.e. iMechanica).

The nice thing about a wiki is that the 'front-facing' pages that most people see are nicely polished and have been refined.  You don't see the history and the junk that's been added and removed over time.  Although, if you click on the history tab of a popular Wikipedia page you'll be amazed at how many times the page has been revised.

There is always going to be a signal-to-noise issue.  That is why you need to have a good (and active) group of moderators.

One big problem with wikis is that changes are automatically accepted and posted.  People watching the page will be notified when this happens and can then check the change.  The page can easily be rolled back to the previous version.  However, in a publishing system you want it to work the other way:  a change is made but not published, the author is notified, if the author approves the change then the article is published with the modifications, if the author does not approve or does nothing then the published article is not updated.

Back when I was writing the first NSF proposal Biswajit gracefully donated a bunch of Metamaterial notes written in LaTeX and posted (in PDF) in iMechanica.  I converted them to my WikiTeX markup which took a few minutes for each page and posted them at http://dssl.mne.psu.edu/NSFEVO/index.php/G.W._Milton_Metamaterials_Notes.

Note:  The equations will only look good on a Mac or with Safari on Windows.  Windows' native image scaling (used by IE and FF) sux. 

Eric, are you saying your software is the ONLY one to write equations in Wiki-style? Then you should think of it as big value, before you embark into a NSF proposal.  Who will own the IPR? 

However, if I search http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Formula

I find that "Displaying a formula is possible", and indeed MediaWiki Handbook: Contents, Readers, Editors, Moderators, System admins +/-

MediaWiki uses a subset of TeX markup, including some extensions from LaTeX and AMSLaTeX, for mathematical formulae. It generates either PNG images or simple HTML markup, depending on user preferences
and the complexity of the expression. In the future, as more browsers
are smarter, it will be able to generate enhanced HTML or even MathML in many cases. (See blahtex for information about current work on adding MathML support.)

More precisely, MediaWiki filters the markup through Texvc, which in turn passes the commands to TeX for the actual rendering. Thus, only a limited part of the full TeX language is supported; see below for details.

To have math rendered, you have to set $wgUseTeX = true; in LocalSettings.php.

So what is exactly your contribution? 

Incidentally, which technology uses http://solidmechanics.org/ ?

Mike,

I am very familiar with all the wiki technologies.  You have been able to add basic equations for many years.  However, the typesetting in connection with the HTML is horrible (i.e. try to make a nice looking in-line equation).  One (of many) things I did was figure out how to set the baseline correct.  I've been waiting five years for MathML to get support in browsers and I've quit waiting.  Honestly, I think SVG will likely be what gets used for equations in the future.  But SVG support is still very spotty.  The <canvas> tag may also be useful as soon as MS includes it in IE.

Other added features: equation and figure numbering, automatically generated bibliographies, automatically updating cross-referencing.  Basically, things LaTeX users take for granted but are not included in MediaWiki.  Also, hover your mouse over an equation number.... 

If you log into the test site (see above for URL) you can now edit pages (and see the source) by logging in as (user: imechanica, pw: rox).  Dynamic equation generation seems to be broken (changing the equation source should automatically produce and cache a new equation graphic) and I don't have time now to track it down.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PV_of_a_Science_of_Nature_editor

Bijwait, again, I am not sure we cannot write original articles in Wikipedia!

PV of a Science of Nature editor
From Meta

Jump to: navigation, search

Some
Wikipedians think that scientific articles on Wikipedia should be
written according to "Point of View of a Science or Nature editor", and
not strict "Neutral Point Of View". Both these points of view are
biased. PVSNE is biased towards science and facts; strict NPOV is biased towards political neutrality and political correctness.

Scientific articles make big portion of every encyclopedia. If "strict" rules of neutral point of view were followed, such articles would be very hard to use. Most people reading article Earth
don't care about people claiming it's flat, most people reading about
World War II don't care about it being punishment for sins of humanity
and most people reading article Evolution don't care about creationism, "humanity was created by aliens" and other non-scientific theories. Therefore strict NPOV must be limited if it conflicts with usability or facts.

Maybe controversial issues should have a front page listing the
pages that describe the different points of view that exist about them,
science being among them. Even within science there sometimes are
competing theories about certain phenomena.

So we could have: Origin of life theory

• Science: Evolution
• Religion: Creationism

what do you think?

I think this POV has been discussed to death on talk:creationism
and that a strictly biased POV should not become wikipedia policy. I
for one would consider forking the pedia, to create an effort which
accommodates various POV, before I'd let this happen.

You might or might not know that the stated Wikipedia policy has been from the beginning the neutral point of view. I, and I imagine Jimbo
as well as most participants in Wikipedia, are no more seriously
considering changing this than we are changing the fact that this is an
encyclopedia. This is one of the constraints on a successful
international, collaborative encyclopedia.

We cannot reasonably expect people to follow a policy that they
don't understand, however, and this policy is really very easy to
misunderstand. It does not imply any controversial positions about
epistemology or metaphysics; it asks (to put it rather simply) that we
do our very best to represent competing points of views fairly, and
that we do not make the article espouse some "official Wikipedia view."
We "go meta" whenever there is any significant dispute, and describe
the dispute. Now, if you don't want to call what we ask "neutrality" or
"nonbias," then call it "schmeutrality" or whatever you like.

SNPOV is biased towards political neutrality and political correctness.

This is just false and represents a simple misunderstanding of what
the policy says. The only thing that the nonbias policy is biased in
favor of is the idea that it is possible to state competing views
fairly within the same article, within some very reasonable constraints
on what is to be considered fair.

If you want to get into a debate about the policy, it would be great
if you would give a concise summary of the arguments that have been
raised against the neutral point of view. I would be only too happy to
reply to help develop a draft and to develop replies. I am firmly
persuaded that very many objections to a nonbias policy stem from a
failure to understand it properly. I'm looking for something similar to
what was done on Wikipedia subpages pros and cons. --LMS

See also : Wikipedia commentary

http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Main Page
From Academic Publishing Wiki

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Welcome

Hello, and welcome to the Academic Publishing Wiki! This
project is meant to give people with original ideas a means of
obtaining peer review and constructive criticism, and also to publish
these ideas in wiki format for the free use and benefit of others.
Works can first be placed in wiki format as an initial draft and marked for inclusion in the critical peer review process. With successful passage through this stage, the article can then be included in an academic journal fitting of it. Questions? FAQ | Wiki publishing

The Academic Publishing Wiki is very new and needs your help. See Current events for existing projects and add more. You can take a short guided tour of this wiki.

Active Journals

Journals can relate to any academic field, and are not limited to
the following. Please feel free to add more as you feel is appropriate.
Full list of journals. Instructions for starting a new journal.
On this wiki:

• Anthropology Magazine
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• Journal of History and Classics
• Journal of Sociology and Social Theory
• Language Journal
• Psychology Journal
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• Wiki Journal

• Yours could be here!

On other Wikia sites:

• Journal of Soul Science
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Policy and suggestions

• There is no "neutral point of view" policy here. However, keep
  in mind that a reasonable argument is more effective, and that a
  stronger point of view may both appear less professional and alienate
  some readers.
• It is strongly recommended that you provide a proper bibliography, and use footnotes to reference quotes. An available system for references.
• Keep in mind that any work posted here is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Do not plagiarize.

Getting started: rough drafts

1. Read the Author guidelines.
2. Create a wiki page for your new article. Create Links and Pages
3. Add the preliminary draft template to your article. Using templates
4. Add the content of your article to the wiki page you created for your article. Need help with wiki?

NOTE: You can browse the articles that are currently in the preliminary drafts category.

Peer Review

You can browse articles that are currently available for peer review. Note: some wiki journals do not list their articles in this generic list of peer review targets.

Retrieved from "http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page"

Categories: Main | Wiki Academic Publishing

Maybe the wiki experiment for imechanica could be within wikia?

Why Publish in PLoS ONE?

Not yet in engineering but..... 

A subject on which not many of us are working, so that it would be good to start a wiki review as it has potentially high impact and huge market is:

Viagra and Mechanics --- Watermelon May Have Viagra-effect

Keeping publications closed and expensive may have severe implications.  See the following paper:

Excluding the poor from accessing biomedical literature: A rights
violation that impedes global health by Gavin Yamey

Researchers in mechanics can afford not to care about such issues because of the limited impact (factor?) of the field.  But can other, more important, fields of study?

-- Biswajit