Scholarpedia:Slogan

Scholarpedia needs a new slogan, since the word "free" is often misunderstood by the invited authors and other users, and it may even have the opposite effect (like we are trying to sell something).

Candidates

1. "Scholarpedia - the open access encyclopedia"

2. "Scholarpedia - the peer-reviewed encyclopedia"

3. "Scholarpedia - the open-access peer-reviewed encyclopedia".

3.05 "Scholarpedia - the peer-reviewed, open-access encyclopedia".

3.1 "Scholarpedia - the open-access, refereed encyclopedia".

4. "Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedia for scientists".

5. "Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedia by scientists". ("... by scholars"?)

6. "Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedia of the scholars' community".

7. "Scholarpedia - the open science encyclopedia".

8. "Scholarpedia - the scholarly open-access encyclopedia".

9. "Scholarpedia - the scholarly open encyclopedia".

10 "Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedic journal".

10.1 "Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedic journal of the scholars' community".

11. "Scholarpedia - the open peer-reviewed encyclopedia"

Discussion

Candidate 3 is the most accurate, but it is too long and cumbersome. The peer-reviewed aspect is important, so candidate 2 makes sense to me. However, this would amount of removing the word "free" from what we have right now and some might think that Scholarpedia went "commercial". Izhikevich

Append your thoughts here (in chronological order):

Open-access is important and is the agreed term for academic material (e.g. journal articles) that is freely available on the web. If you want to avoid the ambiguity of the word "free" then I think you need "open-access" to be clear to people that S'pedia is not going to be (now or ever) subscription only. Unfortunately I don't think that 1 adequately distinguishes S'pedia from Wikipedia which is also open access. We need to get across the idea that S'pedia articles are also written and managed by noted authorities, and we need to do this without sounding elitist. Peer-reviewed seems to capture this, though in a rather unexciting way, so at the moment I can't think of anything better than 3 (edited) and would argue that we go for that. - Tony Prescott

Ditto. Although I guess you meant 3 (It didn't matter at first, but there is a 4 now :) --Nemri 14:13, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

The peer-reviewed encyclopedia sounds good to me. The owl was also the symbol of Athena (as the goddess of wisdom). - Jean-Jacques Slotine .

I added option 4. If you mention that the audience is meant to be scientists, then they can discover later on that this is peer-reviewed. -Paul Katz

What about "Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedia by scientists"? --Nemri 14:13, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

"Scholarpedia - the open-access encyclopedia by scientists and for scientists"? --Pkatz 14:18, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I fancy the hope that parts of Scholarpedia will be accessible to undergrads looking for a reference for their lab reports and also to the typical educated person. "For scientists" may sound too elitist. Even "by scientists" isn't entirely accurate, since historians and engineers do write articles too. "By scholars" works better, but we lose the peer-review that "scientists" suggests. --Nemri 15:24, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I totally agree, except by the part of engineers not being scientists... :) -- Nwerneck 15:28, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I added a whole bunch of lunatic suggestions that you are free to remove, but I am pretty serious about the Latin motto. My duty as a Portuguese speaker... -- nwerneck

The word "free" is already notoriously problematic in the "free software" world, and it is known that "liberty" translates the feeling a little better, but not as good as French, Spanish and Portuguese's "libre/livre", ergo my Latin and other suggestions!... -- Nwerneck 14:35, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I removed the wild suggestions by Nicolau Werneck (Nicolau, thanks for the entertainment!). I added "by scientists" as suggestion number 5. Izhikevich

I totally agree with Tony Prescott. Eventually 3.1 might be a shorter alternative, but I definitely prefer 3: Riccardo Guida

I'm in favour of 3.0 ('open-access peer-reviewed'). I don't think its too cumbersome at all. Trips off the tongue nicely. Not sure if this corresponds to Tony's idea or not since the numbers have been jiggered around a bit already. Option 4 ('for scientists') is also OK though I don't think we need be scared away from 'peer reviewed'; it is what it is. Anil Seth

I don't love "by scientists", and much less "for". Britannica was "by a society of gentleman in Scotland"... My vote is 3, I don't think it's awkward at all. -- Nwerneck 15:08, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

• I suggest avoiding "peer reviewed" and I'm not sure that open access characterizes Scholarpedia. Peer reviewed encyclopedias have a poor history on the Internet. The first one to fail was Nupedia, which had a ridiculous seven stage review process. That failure did of course lead to Wikipedia, which is now making Britannica more and more useless every day. The peer reviewed encyclopedia ideology still lives on at Citizendium, but Scholarpedia has been far more successful to date. Open access journals are just now having their hey day, but is Scholarpedia "open access" in the same sense as something like arXiv? I think of Scholarpedia as the place where the original authors or currently living experts write the article. Britannica operates in a manner similar to this, but the process is closed and updates take ages (note that they are trying to correct this). w.r.t "free", it's not entirely bad as long as there is a clear distinction between the articles that are copyright and copyleft. I have to wonder, given the brevity of the articles here (compared to say, a journal article), why would some authors want to retain the copyright so much? There are lots of benefits to copyleft, and there is a wide variety of CC licenses, some of them perhaps closer to copyright than copyleft. At any rate, if you want to keep your link to Wikipedia, which is a very good idea in my opinion for both practical and ideological reasons, I would suggest encouraging the authors to adopt a CC license. Also note that Wikipedia has been working with CC to create a CC license that is fully backwards compatible with the GFDL. The GFDL was created with free software manuals in mind and is ill suited to encyclopedia articles. In the near future, when Wikipedia switches to this GFDL-compatible CC license, I would suggest removing that option. This is a long rant, so I'll finish up: The direction I would like to see the motto go is to include the words free, scholar and community, because this is a blend of all three. It's what's unique about Scholarpedia as opposed to other projects. If some authors absolutely insist on traditional copyright of their articles, just put them in the "non-free" category. --Mingus 15:15, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I like "open-access" because makes it obvious about being open to read, and is coherent with being (somewhat) open to edit. freedom is a complicated subject that scholars should avoid mentioning! BTW, someone whispered to me "Scholarpedia, the high-browed Wikipedia", but I found that very rude... -- Nwerneck 15:26, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Since the look and feel of Scholarpedia remind of Wikipedias, which is a prototypical open-access project; people might already expect that Scholarpedia is open access. So I would emphasize the 'peer-reviewed'-aspect. The message of open-access could be even seen as already communicated via the name 'Scholarpedia' reminding of 'Wikipedia', in that case i would vote for "Scholarpedia - the peer-reviewed encyclopedia". Otherwise i would change the order of the adjectives: "Scholarpedia - the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia". Another idea: "Scholarpedia - the encyclopedia for scholars". (If it's for scholars, people expect high standards and take it for granted that it's peer-reviewed and written by scholars.) Regarding the logo: how about having a public contest? --Denninger

I changed option 3.1 to "refereed" as I imagine that is what was meant. I also added a comma for option 3... I know, a bit much I suppose, but I believe correct. Of the options proposed, I also prefer 3. --Meiss 15:37 (MDT) 12 May 2008

I think the comma is strictly correct but arguably optional in this case (see http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000072.htm), and because I think it makes 3 look a little more cumbersome I'd rather do without it (so i've deleted it in 3 and left it in 3.1 to allow the comparison!) With regard to Denninger's comment, I don't think open-access should be assumed. Wikipedia is open access, but other encyclopedias, notably Britannica, aren't. I think one of the big appeals to authors is that Scholarpedia is an open-access project, and not just another commercial publisher looking to take out freely-donated content and make a profit by charging people to read it. So lets leave open-access in the slogan as a commitment to both our authors and readers. --Tony Prescott

I've just noticed that "peer-reviewed open-access" (no comma) is essentially the PLOS slogan! So they've already had a similar debate then...--Tony Prescott

Yes, and probably someone suggested this specific order, like Tobias!... We might even create an acronym like "FOSS" for all site like Scholarpedia: "PROA - Peer-Reviewed Open-Access". Interestingly, PROA is easier to pronounce than OAPR, plus it's the Portuguese word for "bow", the front part of a ship (and I don't have to say how they were great navigators). So, "Scholarpedia -- the PROA encyclopedia!" -- Nwerneck 19:57, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I've added 6 and 3.05 (to keep into account previous remarks)... I like both of them....
Maybe 6 is better on the long term when everbody will know that Scholarpedia is peer-reviewed.
Concerning the present owl logo, I like it. --Riccardo Guida

Scholarpedia - the peer reviewed, open access encyclopedia sounds rather good in my opinion -- Srikanth Ramaswamy

I would say that the choice depends on what the point of having a slogan is: "peer-reviewed open-access" is a perfect description for (concurrent) librarians (I'm employed by the Royal Library, and also in charge of open-access publishing). Hence for cataloging Scholarpedia etc that's a good choice. If the slogan is meant for world-wide branding, I would suggest something more colorful. If the slogan aims at description for scholar communities, I would favor "peer-reviewed" over "open-access", perhaps with the word "community", "academics" or something like that added. I added bullet no. 7. (open science), but it might be even worse. Bertil Dorch

I've added "the scholarly open-access encyclopedia". This slogan is meant to accomplish a number of goals, if in a bit subtle ways. First, I feel peer-review is nearly meaningless when considered in the broader context of the internet. It works for scholarly journals, where the journals' readership also constitute its author base (hence, the works within it are reviewed by the authors' peers). In the case of an open-access encyclopedia there is no clear-cut peer group. Secondly, including the word "scholarly" in the slogan helps in making clear why Scholarpedia is so-named. Thirdly, rather than "peer-reviewed", "scholarly" suggests the notion that what sets this *pedia apart is that its content has academic merit. Fourthly, the word "scholarly" itself includes non-scientific contributions, which we ought not prohibit at this point. Lastly, while "scholarly" might not be a familiar term to lay readers, it takes only a quick look at a dictionary (or even Wikipedia) to quickly pinpoint the feature of this encyclopedia that distinguishes it from Wikipedia. So, in sum, "scholarly" draws the distinction from Wikipedia while "open-access" draws the necessary distinction from Encyclopedia Britannica. I should add that another possibility, which I've appended above, is "... - the scholarly open enyclopedia." "Open" seems to be enough to connote the open-access nature of Scholarpedia, but the slogan might not read well, so I'm fine with either (additionally, there is a peer-review component that comes automatically from having an "open" *pedia). Trottier 01:37, 14 May 2008 (EDT)

-- I've added 10 and 10.1 The keyword journal implies peer-reviewed and cited articles and marking this aspect could distinguish us from wikipedia and citizendum.--Riccardo Guida

While arguing about words, names and slogans, I can't help but think of Umberto Eco, and the closing line of his most famous book: Stat rosa pristina nomine; nomina nuda tenemus.--Nwerneck 23:05, 14 May 2008 (EDT)

--- 11. - just replaced "free" with "open"

I like 11. "Open Access" is correct and is a popular term, but sounds to me like the name of a FOSS alternative to MS Office Access!... More importantly: this plain "open" reminds me of Popper´s "open society" -- Nwerneck 09:53, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

If we decide to make some kind of election, I would recommend using the Condorcet method, which is very encyclopedic since he was pupil of d'Alembert. There is a very nice open website that hosts elections using this method. -- Nwerneck 10:02, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

I like open, but most people think that open means that it is open for anybody to contribute, like in Wikipedia. I am sure we will be misuderstood by the community of non-experts willing to contribute to Scholarpedia. Izhikevich

All right, but then we are implying that "access" means simply freedom to read but not much to write... (going lexicological!) I do agree, but I am enjoying thinking of alternatives, how about something like "The unrestrictedly broadcast hierarchically managed encyclopedia"?

By the way, the tradition in FOSS production is already to have project managers that decide to either accept or not volunteers and their code. So, using "free" and "open" in our case is pretty much in compliance with the origin of the term. We shouldn't let Wikipedia dictate that for wiki based encyclopedias, open means strictly an anarchical project. Take Linux and Emacs, for example, two FOSS projects that are notoriously ran by a head that take decisions about how it is going to be. People can pick up the source and branch and create new projects, but THAT program there, with THAT name, is whatever the chief decides.

There is something here related to the color-of-the-bikeshed syndrome... Because there are few people who code software, compared to the number of users, it is easy to think of a free software managed by a few organized people. But then for wikis, because there are so much more users able to write the contents, there are relatively more volunteer candidates. In other words: In software production, the ability to program blocks the volunteers, and the restrictive management is not perceived frequently. In literature, the ability is less of a problem, and the otherwise untested management obstacles show up. So, although the laws of management are pretty much the same, the meaning of "freedom" changes when there are more willing volunteers, wanting to be part of the project instead of freely copying the existing one and creating another project of their own. People mistake this freedom of read and copy, for a supposed "freedom to be part of the project", which is not the main issue. A true mess indeed. -- Nwerneck 14:07, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

Hi Nicolau! How much more complicated can you make this?  :) By the way, I loved the latin slogan, although it's a bit too euro-centric to my taste. --Nemri 14:33, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

Hi! Not much... But it's not me making it complicated, it's just how the pure facts of nature present themselves to my eyes. :) I already casted a few votes, and presented my own suggestion... And if Latin is too eurocentric, I can come up with a Tupi-Guarani translation in no time! Or perhaps Lojban? I must warn you that I actually wear a ring with Quenya inscriptions... -- Nwerneck 15:23, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

I was thinking more along the lines of a Klingon translation, and maybe Chinese. I have nothing against Elfic per se, but it's kind of past-oriented  :) --Nemri 16:18, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

I don't think open necessarily suggests anyone can do anything, especially when the qualification exists that contributions to the encyclopedia be scholarly. It does suggest more freedom to the general public, however, than open-access (which to me largely means free-as-in-beer). I'm very much ambivalent, but might lean just slightly more to the open-access side of things, as it does prevent somewhat the notion that the encyclopedia is a sand box. Trottier 17:38, 23 May 2008 (EDT)