W e argue that the notions of "'symbol" and "symbolic connectivity" can be rigorously developed both from the point of view of the theoretical literature on the symbol and from the point of view of semantic network theory. The theoretical literature, inspired mainly by the literary metaphor, typically takes interpretive density as the chief dimension underlying symbolic expression. Density measures have also dominated the analysis of semantic networks. There is now a sizeable amount of work on the generation of such networks from linguistic data. The majority of that work locates the network and displays it. When attempts are made to analyze the network, the focus is typically on the density (i.e., the number of links) of particular concepts (which serve as the nodes) within the network and on the inferences that can be made about the communicative prominence of such concepts in light of their density. While density is a useful way of analyzing the communicative "connectivity" of a symbol in a message, it provides only one dimension for analyzing connectivity within a semantic network. In this article we offer two further dimensions -conductivity and consensus -with which to analyze semantic networks for connectivity. W e illustrate a typology based on these three dimensions. These dimensions and the associated typology form a useful conceptual device that enables the researcher both to specify and differentiate semantic objects within a rich typology for a given domain of analysis. W e show this device at work by applying the dimensions and typology to different communication contexts and by discussing other possible domains where they can be applied.
This paper reports on a project to develop a "work in preparation" editor, or PREP editor, to study co-authoring and commenting relationships. As part of the project, we have identified three issues in designing computer support for co-authoring and commenting:(1) support for social interaction among co-authors and commenters; (2) support for cognitive aspects of co-authoring and external commenting; and (3) support for practicality in both types of interaction. For each of these issues, the paper describes the approach the PREP editor takes to address them.
GOALS OF THE RESEARCHThe goal of this project is to develop a "work in preparation" (PREP) editor, a multi-user environment to support a variety of collaborative and, in particular, co-authoring and commenting relationships for scholarly communication. In our research, we do not focus on collaborations in which co-authors or commenters interact at the same time, though systems that support research into the issues such collaborations raise are clearly valuable [StefS7]. Our focus is on enhancing the effectiveness of loosely-coupled collaboration. We focus on co-authoring because it represents an interesting challenge for collaborative work over networks: co-authors, after all, must share a planning environment that often relies on, but is nonetheless richer than a working draft. We focus on commenting because it poses a challenge for communication within authoring groups as well as between external readers and such groups. We focus on scholarly communication because scholarly communities as they exist today are already collaborative work groups. They are not explicitly organized around single, concrete goals, but members of groups share the common goal of advancing the state of knowledge. Such work groups are organized in local settings, but they also interact intensively at a distance, as members of a common "invisible college" [Cran72].
ISSUES IN SUPPORTlNG CO-AUTHORING AND COMMENTINGThe PREP editor we are developing addresses three issues: (1) support for social interaction among co-authors and commenters; (2) support for cognitive aspects of coauthoring and external commenting; and (3) support for practicality in both types of interaction.
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