From Content-Centered Publishing to a Link-based View of Information Resources

Influenced by the linking model which is implicit in HTML, today’s publishing model on the Web is contentcentered, with the emphasis of publishing on content rather than links. With the growing amount of information available on the Web, and the more powerful hypermedia architectures made possible by new Web technologies, putting the content into context will become increasingly important. In this paper, a new way of structuring publishing systems for information providers is presented in an attempt to shift the emphasis in Web-based publishing from content to an improved balance between content and links. After a description of the architecture of a link-based publishing system, a strategy for implementing such a system is described. Finally, a number of challenges associated with such a fundamental transition in the publishing model are described, in the technical as well as in the organizational domain.