Translations
The UK MetOffice translated old German language ocean science papers for their employees and now kindly put them on their homepage.
Last week I was at a conference in South America with simultaneous translations English-Spanish. This was really necessary. For me to understand the talks in Spanish. For many South American participants to understand the English talks. A colleague from Argentina told me that she makes translations and spreads them to her colleagues.
I think it would be valuable to have a repository for such translations to spread them more widely (if legally allowed; another plus for Open Access publishing). An good start would be to allow them to be uploaded to EarthArXiv. What do you think?
Christopher Jackson Wed 6 Jun 2018 7:48AM
I guess my gut-feeling is that, at this early stage, to get adoption from as broad a church as possible, we need to focus on what most folks think are the core research materials, that is manuscripts and associated data.
Ivanka Mitrovic Wed 6 Jun 2018 7:04AM
I would encourage everyone to have at least an abstract in another language...preferebaly the language of your field area, or something relevant. Translating whole paper is way too much work. As i mentioned in the poll comment:
I have had situations where (western) scientist would present their work at a conference (AGU, GSA, EGU) and make a claim about something not being done in the area of the study (Eastern Europe), but i knew for sure it had been..in the local language.
So, yes, we do need some sort of translations.
Victor Venema Fri 8 Jun 2018 5:33PM
The result is about 50/50 between hosting translations on the moderated EarthArXiv or on the unmoderated OSF feed. Both are okay solutions.
However, before we transfer the question to the Advisory Council I would love to understand better why people have reservations about hosting them at EarthArXiv. That would be useful information for my grassroots journals and also for people who may set up a dedicated global FAIR database for translations.
That we cannot check the translation is a good argument, but we are only supposed to check whether something is a serious contribution, not whether the quality is high enough. For the former in most cases Google Translate & Co. would be sufficient and people will warn us if someone tries to game the system.
(By the way, it may be nice to have a button on the page with the pre-prints where readers can flag the manuscript/attend the moderators to any issues.)
I am not sure whether non-English speakers would agree that translations are not core research materials. Even if we do not see translations as part of our core business, we do not have to change our software/methods to accommodate them and I do not expect that there are people who would say: I would have uploaded my manuscript to EarthArXiv if only those globalists did not host translations as well.
Looking forward to a discussion on these two points and further arguments for and against hosting translations so that the Advisory Council can make an informed decision and people interested in translations can make a good system.
(Anonymous comments can be made below my last blog post.)
Victor Venema Sat 9 Jun 2018 5:02PM
If we make it a real ranked vote the result is clearer in favour of the OSF; 10 favour OSF, 8 EarthArXiv. If we each time shift the people with the least favoured option to their second open, that is.
Round 1
8 EarthArXiv
8 Open Science Foundation
5 Some other dedicated platform
2 No need to do this
23 Total
“No need to do this” removed
Round 2
8 EarthArXiv
8 Open Science Foundation
7 Some other dedicated platform
0 No need to do this
“Some other dedicated platform” removed
Round 3
8 EarthArXiv
10 Open Science Foundation
0 Some other dedicated platform
0 No need to do this
18 Total
Christopher Jackson Wed 13 Jun 2018 3:02AM
Proportional representation? I think I remember this from a referendum in the UK a few years back...More seriously, thanks Victor for leading this discussion. I guess the upshot is that the broader community, or at least 23 folks, feel that OSF should host these material somewhere and in some way, but not on EarthArXiv. Correct? In any case, I've made my argument for this solution, so I guess we should give others a few more days before we revert to the Advisory Group.
Victor Venema · Tue 5 Jun 2018 9:01PM
Interesting how many would prefer to have translations hosted elsewhere. I would be curious to know why. (You do not have to upload or read these translations yourself.)