Questions about the spec

[j-steinbach]

I went over the spec and noted down a few questions and observations. Please note that I am still very ignorant about the topic.

• §2: Do the ResearcherPod and ErfgoedPod project have a "real" project website? I am missing some sort of link(s) for "advanced reading"
• §4
  • Agent: What is the difference between a person and a social entity? What exactly is a social entity?
  • Activity: "An activity describes some form of action directly or indirectly related to an artifact that is currently happening, or has already happened." This sentence is hard to understand. Is it the action or the artifact that is happening? If it is the action, maybe write it as "An activity describes some form of past or present action that is related to an artifact."
  • Service Result: What is a "value-added" service? Are there also "value-detracting" services?
    • What is a service? Are services related to artifacts? (always?)
  • Node: What is a resource? Are there other types of resources besides "inbox" and "Lifecycle Event Log"?
  • Data Node: What is the difference between data and artifacts? Why not just write data?
  • Lifecycle Event: "somehow impacts"? How? Does a butterfly flapping its wings on the east impact the weather on the west? Also, is there a private life cycle?
  • Lifecycle Event Log: "append only public resource" sounds a bit like block-chain..
  • Data Pod: Just storing documents? What about other kinds of data? Why not call it data directly? Or artifacts?
• §5: "requirements needed to be permanently online": Just online? Or online and (publicly) available? Those are different.
• §6.1: What is "scholarly communication" exactly? It is used a few times in the document, but its definition stays loose.

Finally, some more general observations:

• I am missing some sort of example workflow that demonstrates how the spec works in a day-to-day use scenario. Maybe describe how an actor (scholar) interacts with an artifact (document)?
• A few links are not working, so maybe check them one-by-one

[phochste]

@j-steinbach Thanks. We will discuss you remarks.

If you are curious:

Scholarly communication networks is a term used for anything related the process of academics to disseminate research. Every time you create a research paper, put it on a web server, or arXiv or send it to a conference or a journal, you are doing scholarly communication (make the world known you did something important that needs to be known). Value-adding in scholarly context is like Berners-Lee "Oh Yeah?" button [1].. what makes your contribution valuable in a scholarly world:

• When it gets accepted for a conference
• When it gets accepted in a journal
• When it gets peer-reviewed
• When it gets added into A&I databases such as the Web of Science

All these values are intellectual activities, some experts look at your research and give it a stamp of "scientific interesting".

In this way a value-detracting service would be a journal that retracts your article.

Where is this information now? Locked in a few publish websites in endless adhoc solutions.

Where is this information in the future when on the decentralized web any one can publish "Flat earth dynamics" in Latex with references, fancy graphics and tensor products?

This need to be fixed.

[1] https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/UI#OhYeah

[mielvds]

Hi @j-steinbach , thanks for the review! I' processing your

I went over the spec and noted down a few questions and observations. Please note that I am still very ignorant about the topic.

* §2: Do the ResearcherPod and ErfgoedPod project have a "real" project website? I am missing some sort of link(s) for "advanced reading"

ErfgoedPod does not because it's a sort of side track to the ResearcherPod project and I'm short of time, but there will be a simple page eventually

* §4
  
  * Agent: What is the difference between a person and a social entity? What exactly is a social entity?

A social entity is a term for things like an organization. But I changed it to organization, because that's much clearer.

  * Activity: "An activity describes some form of action directly or indirectly related to an artifact that is currently happening, or has already happened." This sentence is hard to understand. Is it the action or the artifact that is happening? If it is the action, maybe write it as "An activity describes some form of past or present action that is related to an artifact."

Good suggestion, thanks!

  * Service Result: What is a "value-added" service? Are there also "value-detracting" services?

I added a definition of value-added service. A value-detracting service could also be another value-added service, depending of how you preceive "value".

    * What is a service? Are services related to artifacts? (always?)

A service is some kind of service... the definition of value-added service will probably help here. Yes, they are always related to artefacts.

  * Node: What is a resource? Are there other types of resources besides "inbox" and "Lifecycle Event Log"?

A Web resource, something identified or located by URI

  * Data Node: What is the difference between data and artifacts? Why not just write data?

Data is too vague, too generic. An artefact is some tangible piece of data, a specific kind of Web resource. I would rather change it to Artefact Node.

  * Lifecycle Event: "somehow impacts"? How? Does a butterfly flapping its wings on the east impact the weather on the west? Also, is there a private life cycle?

It's not possible to tell in a definition, because it depends on the application domain what the relevant events are. I removed the word somehow, because it puts unnecessary emphasis on the how.
There is no private life cycle, but there are private and public events. Basically, the ones you decide to tell people about the ones you don't. I rephrased it a bit.

  * Lifecycle Event Log: "append only public resource" sounds a bit like block-chain..

There are many append-only logs that have nothing to do with blockchain, so I don't really understand this comment...?

  * Data Pod: Just storing documents? What about other kinds of data? Why not call it data directly? Or artifacts?

Because the word artefact keeps us within the context of this project; data could be anything and it's hard to communicate restrictions about them.

* §5: "requirements needed to be permanently online": Just online? Or online and (publicly) available? Those are different.

Just online

* §6.1: What is "scholarly communication" exactly? It is used a few times in the document, but its definition stays loose.

Finally, some more general observations:

* I am missing some sort of example workflow that demonstrates how the spec works in a day-to-day use scenario. Maybe describe how an actor (scholar) interacts with an artifact (document)?

Yes, we were still planning something like that, which would also explain the difference between artifact and service result.

* A few links are not working, so maybe check them one-by-one

I don't see them. Can you give an example?

[j-steinbach]

@mielvds: For the links: I can't access Web Resource and URI. For some other links I mistakenly assumed they would lead to "Terms defined by this specification" and didn't find them there, whereas they were described in the "Informative References" section. This is because the site can't perfectly jump and scroll down to that section, as it is at the bottom of the page.

Disregard the "block-chain" comment, I don't know what I wanted to say there myself :)