James Mahaffy (mahaffy at dordt.edu) Phone: 712 722-6279
Biology Department FAX : 712 722-1198
Dordt College, Sioux Center IA 51250
>>> "Dr. Peter W. Pappas" <pappas.3 at osu.edu> 10/11/99 09:03AM >>>
With all due respect to journal editors and publishers, I am growing
frustrated with the amount of time and effort it takes to get papers
published. Manuscripts must be typed, mailed, sent out to referees,
reviewed, sent back to editors, mailed back to authors, revised (almost
always), resubmitted, reviewed again (possibly), accepted (hopefully), sent
to the printer, published, and finally mailed to subscribers and libraries.
The internet has provided us with a wonderful opportunity to reduce
significantly the amount of time and effort needed to publish papers,
without jeopardizing "quality," and I think that we as parasitologists and
biologists should take advantage of this medium.
To which I responded; (my e-mail doesn't generate > marks)
There are a number of good journals published this way. I know the paleontology community has a new scholarly journal on the internet. But I am not sure how much time we save. Of the steps Peter talks about the only real savings time is the time between a manuscript that is reviewed and the time it is too be published. That may be significant and perhaps if it is at a web site and not distributed then perhaps the journal could accept more articles (without quality loss) and have less of a waiting period to fit it into the journal. Some issues could even be shorter. Price and cost of distribution could be a lot less but how do you get even those reduced costs covered if you unless you require a subscription to read the articles.
And of course it is hard to beat paper for archiving in libraries. Can I find the articles ten years down the road? But if the articles now are in so expensive European journals that most libraries don't have them (true of several journals in my area), even print articles are not that readily available and a lot more folks can afford to read an electronic article.
Just some ideas to think about.
Thus, I think it's time for a new parasitology journal, one that is
published exclusively on the internet. All of the journal's business,
including submissions, reviews, and publication, would be handled
electronically, and the publication would be available freely to anyone with
access to the internet.
Assuming that all the logistics could be worked out, how do readers of this
NG feel about this? Do you think that we are ready for such a journal?
--
Dr. Peter W. Pappas
Professor, Department of EEOB
The Ohio State University
1735 Neil Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone 614-292-2746
FAX 614-292-2030
pappas.3 at osu.edu
