Another issue to consider.  As was apparent from the discussions of business models at the Beyond the PDF2 conference, the prices currently charged for author pays open access in the sciences, often up to 3K per article, are out of reach for many in the humanities and in developing countries.

Eric Edsinger: In many ways, Nature’s interface/suite of features for ENCODE is at the cutting edge of scientific publication – and includes features similar to what Scalar will offer for the humanities. So I’d say the presentation of data/subjects/ideas is not so different at higher levels.

I’m excited to see how approaches to research and data will change as things move forward and user-friendly tools for media integration/presentation become increasingly powerful and accessible.

JCachat: Thank you for your comment – I had a look at Nature’s implementation of ENCODE [http://www.nature.com/encode/#/threads] and agree with your sentiment. In fact, that Nature’s ENCODE reminded me of was the infographics found in the New York Times, as well as all the great interactive graphics found on visual analytics blogs like http://visualizing.org/.

In many ways these /ARE/ the implementation of the leading each of IT and communication of ideas in social sciences and humanities – actually thinking about it I would say that “the other culture” has actually been doing these things for much longer than natural scientists would like to admit.

Project Aims to Bring PLoS-Style Openness to the Humanities