OWW Collaborative Writing Initiative

Opportunity

Collaborative writing Initiative

Analysis / Rationale

Writing is the precursor to sharing in a web-based environment. By launching a collaborative writing space on OWW, we will encourage community members to develop ideas out in the open. With my background as an acquiring/developmental editor, I will offer initial editorial guidance to community members who want to work in the OWW writing space. I'm also putting feelers out into the publishing world to find other editors with an interest in open science. I want to eventually build a service / subcommunity on OWW where prospective authors can obtain professional editorial assistance for their writing projects, as long as they're willing to work out in the open.

One selling point we can offer to prospective authors is exposure to people in the science publishing world. As Julius and I develop this idea further, I will work my contacts in the publishing world to be sure that the right people are watching.

Communities served

Level 3: Research community/World

Strategy and usage

Julius Lucks has volunteered to seed the effort by writing a book on OWW with several co-authors. I will be his editor. We've found a small publisher (University Science Books) who is interested in offering a print edition. We've already found another author who is interested in writing an article on OWW.

In the beginning stages I anticipate most of the OWW authors will launch projects they feel are "safe" to have on OWW, such as programming for science, and informatics. As time goes on, however, we'll steer people toward writing scientific papers on OWW.

Technical strategy: