Print versus web publishing

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Years from now historians might regard the differences between the 
Internet and print journals today in the same light as those that 
existed between handwritten manuscripts and material produced by the 
Gutenberg press during the dawn of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. 
One form of communication has enormously democratic implications while 
the other serves as an elitist club open only to those who have been 
accepted into the priesthood. In Gutenberg's day, it was the Catholic 
church. Today it is tenured academia.)

---

NY Times, June 26, 2004
A Quiet Revolt Puts Costly Journals on Web
By PAMELA BURDMAN

When Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University, decided 
to release a groundbreaking study in an upstart online journal, his 
colleagues were flabbergasted. The research, demonstrating how brain 
implants enabled monkeys to operate a robotic arm, was a shoo-in for 
acceptance in premier journals like Nature or Science.

"Usually you want to publish your best work in well-established journals 
to have the widest possible penetration," Dr. Nicolelis said. "My idea 
was the opposite. We need to open up the dissemination of scientific 
results." The journal Dr. Nicolelis chose — PLoS Biology, a publication 
of the Public Library of Science — aims to do just that by putting 
peer-reviewed scientific papers online free, at the Web site 
www.plosbiology.org.

The high subscription cost of prestigious peer-reviewed journals has 
been a running sore point with scholars, whose tenure and prominence 
depend on publishing in them. But since the Public Library of Science, 
which was started by a group of prominent scientists, began publishing 
last year, this new model has been gaining attention and currency within 
academia.

More than money and success is at stake. Free and widespread 
distribution of new research has the potential to redefine the way 
scientific and intellectual developments are recorded, circulated and 
preserved for years to come.

"Society pays for science," said Dr. Nicolelis, whose article in the 
October issue of PLoS got worldwide attention. "We have the technology, 
we have the expertise. Why is it that the only thing that has remained 
the same for 50 years is the way we publish our results? The whole 
system needs overhaul."

(clip)

But more and more academics are viewing traditional publishers as 
obstacles to wide dissemination of studies paid for by public monies. 
Several open access alternatives are being hotly debated in academic 
online discussion groups and in the mainstream science press. The 
criticism even extends to some nonprofit publications, like the journal 
Science, which nearly tripled prices for its largest subscribers over 
the last two years.

Late last year, two scientists at the University of California at San 
Francisco called for a global boycott by authors and editors of six 
molecular biology journals published by Elsevier. They timed the 
campaign to coincide with the moment that the the University of 
California system was renegotiating its contract with the company.

"The mission and mandate of scientific publishing is to provide a formal 
record of scientific discovery, not to make publishing companies rich or 
editors famous," said one of the organizers, Keith R. Yamamoto, a 
prominent microbiologist and the vice dean for research.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/books/26PUB.html


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