Publishing media

Mathematical and scientific documents are still published in dead-tree formats, mainly PDFs. I think the time is ripe for more dynamic, interactive papers, including, for example, interactive graphics and structured proofs.

Journals

A few journals are pioneering new forms of academic publication.

Distill (GitHub )
- Avant-garde ML journal, focusing on accessible exposition and interactive visualizations
JoDS : Journal of Design Science
- “Forges new connections between science and design”
- Comments allowed on articles and on specific passages therein

Projects

Interactive essays by the well-known Bret Victor
- Examples: Scientific communication as sequential art ; Up and down the ladder of abstraction
- Some interesting ideas, but overemphasizes interactive visualization and deeply misunderstands the purpose and value of mathematics
- Tangle : JS library for “reactive documents” (GitHub , HN )
Editoria (GitLab )
- Web-based book authoring, with implicit humanities emphasis
- Project of Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (CoKo)
- Built on PubSweet (GitLab )
Texture (GitHub )
- Web-based scientific authoring, based on new Dar format
- Project of Substance Consortium, which includes CoKo
PubPub (GitHub )
- Platform for collaborative authoring and publishing
- Used by JoDS

Resources

I’m considering building my own tools. Here are some resources that might be helpful.

Svelte (GitHub )
- JS UI framework, comparable to React or Angular but much lighter
- Used by default in Distill
Knockout.js (GitHub )
- Or next generation version (“Knockout 4”), TKO (GitHub )
- In the spirit of Bret Victor’s Tangle, but maintained and widely used