TOPAZ and CLADDIER

Hopefully of great interest to those of us looking at self-publishing, Open Notebooks, etc.

Deepak Singh: A publication and a publication framework

When PLoS One was first announced, one of the first things that caught my eye was the fact that it was built on an open source publishing framework, Topaz. As much as anything else, that was one of the reasons that PLoS One was so appealing; a journal that put the web first. Today, Topaz took a big step in becoming a general scientific publishing framework
Some of the cool new features found in the new release candidate (bold emphasis mine)

• Enable multiple journals using a single repository
• Skins for multiple journals.
• Filter search results by journal using OTM
• TrackBack linkbacks for articles
• Citation download of the article
• Migration to the Struts 2 web application framework

Personally, it is very exciting to see trackbacks implemented in a scientific publishing platform. Trackbacks are a powerful vehicle for communication (I prefer them to commenting), and allows people to discuss papers at length on their blogs in the appropriate context. It was one of the first feature requests that I submitted to the PLoS folks, as I am sure did many others, so one can feel good about it.
The next step for Topaz is to get to version 1.0 when it will become available with source. Many publications, struggling with funding and very poor internet presence could do much worse than adopt the Topaz platform. I wonder what uses people could make for Topaz outside the formal publishing field – Open Notebook Science perhaps?

PMR: This ties up very nicely with what Brian Matthews (RAL) told us at eScience All-hands about CLADDIER (and *). This inlcudes (is?) a data overlay journal with trackback. People with a data entry can know whether someone else in the system has used their entry. Trackback has had a problem with SPAM but I expect that within a research community this is soluble.