John Baez writes about a new software package to address two problems of concern to academics: 1) expensive journals and 2) ineffective peer review. (I can write volumes about ineffective peer review in SDOs but will save that for another day.)
The Selected Papers Network (Part 1)
The Selected Papers Network (Part 2)
See John’s post both for details on the problems and the solution developed by Christopher Lee.
In part the solution relies upon customary hash tags but there is a step in a new direction.
From the second post:
These tags are public; that is, everyone can see what topics the paper has been tagged with, and who tagged them.
Experience has shown that hash tags are no more or less ambiguous than our use of natural language. But with the Selected Papers Network we have the hashtag and its author.
Authors themselves are inconsistent but most authors are trying to communicate and that requires the consistency expected by a particular audience.
Having an author also eases the task of assigning a particular tag, by a defined group of users, to a particular domain. And for that domain, creating an explicit semantic for the tag.
An explicit semantic that could be displayed for users of a tag in a domain, creating a feedback loop on the semantics of the tag.
Any number of syntax proposals have been made in efforts to induce users to author machine readable semantic annotations. All have universally failed.
Is tag + author enough to distinguish the semantics of tags?
Do we need require any more of authors to indicate their semantics?