Wikipedia defines hyper- as:

1. over, above or beyond
2. excessive
3. existing in more than three spatial dimensions
4. linked non-sequentially

Hyper-documents are exciting, expressive, difficult, progressive. Henry Rzepa and I have entered into the spirit of this by creating the datument - a mixture of full-text and rich content. Hypo- is the opposite: a prefix imported from Greek meaning “below”, “low”, or “insufficient”.  (WP again) Almost all current scholary publishing is hypo-publication in many senses. It is the antitithesis of hypertext both technically and morally. It illustrates the destruction of human scholarship rather than the practice. It constrains authors to say what the publisher wants, not what they and the community want. It destroys rich content. Some bioscience, maths, physics is hyper-published. All chemical information is hypopublished. So is materials science, engineering. It impoverishes not only the practitioners of the disciplines but also those who practice multidisciplinary science. A hyperpublication can be a complete record of a scientific endeavour. Jean-Claude Bradley (recent recipient of a Blue Obelisk) practices this. I hope to follow this lead. A hypopublication is to a hyperpublication what a film review is to a film. It is for summary and public acclaim, not the actual science itself. It often serves to conceal as much as to reveal. Next week I shall be in Phoenix at a JISC/NSF meeting on  “data driven science“. It’s exciting - the prospect of huge amounts of science coming directly from large collections of information. I explain why this can’t be done for chemistry. The next post eleborates on this. So please let’s move away from hypopublication. This has to be done by the top level of academia. We must redeem our scholarship from the turgidness of fragmented, hidden, publications which are designed only to be cited, not used.

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