A new book of essays titled The Fourth Paradigm: Data Intensive Scientific Discovery, has been released by Microsoft Research and is available for download under a Creative Commons license at

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/contents.aspx

You can download the whole book, or individual sections or subsections. The book, edited by Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley and Kirstin Tolle, is being released in conjunction with the Microsoft E-science meeting currently being held at Carnegie-Mellon University. The book is dedicated to the memory of Jim Gray and explores his intellectual legacy in Earth and Environment, Health and Well Being, Scientific Infrastructure, and Scholarly Communication. Many of the chapters are by authors well-known within the CNI community, particularly in the Scholarly Communications section, which includes contributions by Timo Hanny, Paul Ginsparg, Herbert Van de Somple and Carl Lagoze; I also had the opportunity to contribute a chapter for this section. I would urge CNI-announce readers to at least browse beyond the Scholarly Communications section; there are a number of important chapters on broader developments in e-science that I think will be of interest. There's also a short interview wtih Tony Hey about the book at

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/fourthparadigm-101609.aspx

(DIsclosure: I serve on the Microsoft Research External Advisory Board.)

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI