Three Steps To Heaven: Semantic Publishing In A Real World Workflow / quote 2 of 2
Relationship author/reader in semantic publishing (semantics as a byproduct of the process)
Our key constraint is the desire to add value for all the human participants. Both authors and readers should see and recognise additional value, with the semantics a useful or necessary byproduct of the process, rather than the primary motivation. [...] ..we have followed a strong principle of semantic enhancement that offers advantages to both reader and author immediately. Hence, adding references as a DOI, or other identifier, “automagically” produces an in-text citation and a nicely formatted reference list. The reference list is no longer present in the article but is a visualisation over linked data. A happy by-product is that the article itself becomes a first class citizen of this linked data environment. [...] ... advantages may be indirect; richer reader semantics may attract more readers and thus more citations—which the authors appreciate as much as the act of publishing itself. It is, however, difficult to imagine how such advantages can be conveyed to the author at the point of writing. It is easy to see the advantages of semantic publishing for readers, but as a community, we need to pay attention to advantages to the authors too. Without these “carrots”, we will only have “sticks”—and authors, particularly technically skilled ones, are highly adept at working around the sticks.