In article <370A95E9.4937 at post.queensu.ca>, forsdyke at post.queensu.ca wrote:
> For years I have envied the physics community's electronic
> publication system (Paul Ginsparg). Biologists can deposit gene
> sequences at central repositories, why not the full texts of papers?
> Now, Science (March 12th 1999) announces "NIH Weighs Bold Plan for
> Online Preprint Publishing" to produce "a one-stop, public source for
> biomedical research papers".
>[...]
> I suspect they will get bogged down in a non-issue... peer-review
> "certification" of quality. We are in new ball-park. There is no need
> for journal peer-review. There is plenty of space out there for text.
> Let the reader's choose with the invaluable help of the numerous
> sophisticated search facilities now available.
>
These solutions all imply financial and administrative solutions other
than todays practice. And it relies on solid support from the majority of
the scientific community. As far as I can see it, this is not present
today. The reason is of course multifacetted, with the benefit of the
present peer process as it aids science today, the possibility of
scientific influence through positions in editorial boards etc., just to
name a couple.
The main advantage for a scientist to change the present order is to have
ready access to all published material through the net, including access
to previously published material. The key question is therefore how to
achieve this goal, and not how to transform publication policies and
infrastructure of the whole scientific endeavour.
I will submit that the simplest way to do this is to "persuade" all
present day journals to submit electroniccaly accessible versions of their
journals to online browsing and searching in a publicly available, open
format. This may sound naive, but I would suspect the means to make them
should be available. Changes in policies of government funding money
should be sufficient to make such changes happen. My idea is that this
will open up for further changes and bring about changes in the way these
matters are viewed by the scientific community.Of course, securing
publication copyrights for the scientist is necessary as well as other
such matters must be handled properly.
Sincerely, naively
Eivind Hovig
