Hackday 2014-06-19 in Edinburgh – a radically new approach to Scholarly Communication in the Digital Enlightenment « petermr's blog

"Summary: Help us change the way we communicate Science and the Humanities in the Digital Enlightenment. Free [1] EVERYONE can help.Edinburgh is the capital of the Scottish Enlightenment where free thinkers changed the way we think about and run the world. Next week (June 19th) we’ll be running a hackday to change the way that we communicate Science and the  Humanities.  For 400 years we have relied on the 'printed journal' and 'articles' (e.g. 'PDFs') and now we’re doing something completely different. Authors should be able to do what *they* want and readers should be able to read in the way *they* want. And readers aren’t just lecturers, they are 4-year olds, patients and machines. 4-year olds LOVE DINOSAURS.  We’ve built most of the basics. We are going to:  [1] SCRAPE material from PLOS (and other Open) articles. And some of these are FUN! They’re about DINOSAURS!!  [2] EXTRACT the information. Which papers talk about DINOSAURS? Do they have pictures?  REPUBLISH as a book. [3] Make your OWN E-BOOK with Pictures of DINOSAURS with their FULL LATIN NAMES!! ..."