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Monday, September 02, 2002

Free Science

When people find any of my web pages via Google, the search string shows up in my web logs. This week's winner:

	women "public transport" chocolate law bed window

It feels like a clue on a mystery game-show and I'm supposed to guess what crime is about to be comitted, and by whom. Someone should make a satirical web site devoted to fighting crime using the vast intellectual powers of the internet audience to pre-cog from posted Google searches. "Based on today's selected searches, please describe the crime: [ ] A majority report will be generated automatically from a statistical synthesis of the day's submissions and posted here tomorrow."

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My research is progressing very well, but in the wrong direction: down. Down in levels of abstraction, that is, into something so pure and elegant probably only one angel could dance on it without falling off. (Oh dear, I'm trying to draw analogies while tired. That's like a squirrel trying to climb a tree while carrying an acorn like a farmer carries a cold lamb.)

In theory, pure and elegant should be good. Well they are. It's in practice that they're sometimes a pain in the ass. It's like a Turing Machine, which is great for fundamental theoretical analysis of algorithms, but who's practical application is relegated to academic stunts.

Unfortunately, I really need to nail it down on this (low) level, since any error left uncorrected here will only be amplified higher up. It's just hard to work on so many levels of abstraction at once. I'm ultimately trying to solve a problem posed about six levels of abstraction away from here. It's turning my brain to mush.

Can you tell?

In other news, I'm presently half-way through reading a fascinating though rather long article with the rather long title In Oldenburg's Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing. And on a very related track, I've started assembling a web page called Free Science, with a double-meaning to Free, that might look something like this (except I haven't decided if such a page is actually needed, in light of some similar indices already on the web...):

Free Science This page is dedicated to scientific journals with free online access. Please email me if you have suggestions for additions. AI/Cognitive Science Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research JAIR covers all areas of artificial intelligence (AI), publishing refereed research articles, survey articles, and technical notes. Journal of Machine Learning Research The Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) provides an international forum for the electronic and paper publication of high-quality scholarly articles in all areas of machine learning. Biology Journal of Biology Journal of Biology, an international journal publishing biological research articles of exceptional interest and importance. Mathematics Geometry & Topology Geometry and Topology is a fully refereed international journal dealing with all aspects of geometry and topology and their applications. Medical Free Medical Journals The Free Medical Journals Site is dedicated to the promotion of free access to medical journals over the Internet. Other Similar Indices Scholarly Journals Distributed Via the World-Wide Web This directory provides links to established Web-based scholarly journals that offer access to English language article files without requiring user registration or fees.

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