The internet has profoundly changed how scientists work and publish. Today, the vast majority of printed articles are also available in electronic form, theoretically accessible to anyone with interest and an internet connection. New business models are being tested by publishers, including open access, in which the author pays to publish and content is free to the user.
Physicists have been at the forefront of the open-access revolution, which seeks to disseminate research findings as quickly and widely as possible. They pioneered the preprint system - which makes papers available while the work is still being peer reviewed by a journal - accessible today via preprint servers such as arXiv.org or SPIRES.
However, these developments have their drawbacks. Libraries are more likely to cancel subscriptions in such self-archiving fields. This means an increasing number of researchers - some in prestigious universities - can no longer read important journals (The preprint version of a paper is rarely identical to the final published version). A purely electronic format for papers also brings the problem of providing durable archiving media.
Most importantly open access models beg the question how payment by the author will affect the strategies of those writing, and those publishing. There is the danger that dominance will be obtained by those with good financial resourches, both on the side of the scientist, as well as on the side of the publisher. This carries the risk of disadvantage for less fortunate institutions, and of streamlining publishers towards high profit. In an contribution to the Notices of the American Mathematical Sciety “Where Are Journals Headed? Why We Should Worry About Author-Pay,” John Ewing asks for caution and concludes:
“We are therefore heading in the wrong direction.
Scholarly journals are sick and they need attention.
But instead of following a regimen of reasoned and
disciplined remedies—instead of driving down
prices by the steady, concerted actions of authors,
editors, and librarians—we are bleeding the patient
with open access models, trusting in miracles (that
university administrators will shift funds from
those with research funds to those without), and
praying that publishers will repent their ways.”
In addition to these problems, the high number of scientific publications and increasing specialization at the forefront of research challenges the functionality of the peer-review process, which tends to support rather than counteract the division into weakly interacting sub-communities. The assets and drawbacks of open-access (though in many cases already a reality) and the efficiency of the present peer-review system, and the usefulness of the scientific citation index - another example of a network - are subject to ongoing discussion. These topics require the attention not only of the scientific publishers but of the scientific community itself.
This topic is directly related to The Information Era: Dangers and Opportunities.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 28 July 2008 )
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