Essay · 2022
Writing Online
Insights into open scientific and technical publishing—and why the web should be more than a delivery mechanism for PDFs.
Scientific research has long been gatekept by academic behemoths. However, open-source development and open education efforts have rubbed off on the space.
Research moves at a breakneck pace in fields like machine learning and deep learning. In such an environment, a culture of openness and sharing is necessary to maintain an edge. Yes, this comes with drawbacks, with preprint archival sites offering experiences akin to drinking out of a firehose.
Beyond the PDF
Most of the scientific literature to date has followed rigid publishing standards that weren't optimized for scalability on the modern web. Most papers are only available in PDF formats that use .
Projects like ar5iv and arxiv-vanity aimed to combat this PDF monopoly by converting to HTML to serve stylized webpages.
Most text and code lives in notebooks such as Jupyter, Pluto, R Markdown, and Observable.