What was the question? Reconciling open hypermedia and World Wide Web research

This paper considers some of the issues surrounding the relationship between open hypermedia systems research and World Wide Web research. Both areas claim to address advanced hypermedia systems issues, but do so in quite different ways. Although there has been some cooperation between members of these fields, there is significant room for improvement. With both fields using much different approaches in what is ostensibly the same area, researchers often feel more need to justify their approach over others instead of looking for ways to synthesize their results. In this paper, we consider two “extremist” positions that caricature/characterize points of view held by some members of these fields, allowing each field to “make its case” as the “true” home of hypermedia systems research. We then reconcile these radically different perspectives, and in doing so, propose a framework that makes more apparent the contributions of each field and that we feel forms a basis for more fruitful cooperation.