I think that this is a great step forward, as is the discussion of digital
publishing in Ryan McEwan's posted link. I would like to add a related point
to this discussion.
More and more often conferences are the venue for primary or secondary
publications. It used to be that at a conference one just presented research
in progress and exchanged ideas, but institutions now often refuse to pay
your way unless you present a final publication. This creates publishing
pressure, and since the organisers usually have made advance commitments to
publishers they can only accept a fixed number of pages. Often they
underestimate the supply of publishable research, with the result that some
good papers are not accepted.
I recall one such conference which proved far more popular than anyone
expected, and only about one third of the acceptable papers were actually
accepted for publication. I suggested to the editor that the rest be
pulished on a website if the authors wished, but he was totally contemptuous
of the idea. Since then I think that digital publishing has become more
acceptable, but a major concern is whether it earns brownie points for the
authors - will it help them in the job market?
From a scientific point of view I think that web publishing, especially open
access, is a great step forward. Many scientists, myself included, put their
papers on the web whether or not they have appeared in printed journals (and
if the PDF is not available, I post the manuscript in HTML). The journals
that permit comments and other forms of feedback are really adding a new
dimension to scientific communication. But we also need to ensure that there
is a good infrastructure in place so that scientists who publish on the web
can keep their jobs!
Bill Silvert
http://bill.silvert.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thiago Silva" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 2:28 AM
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] [Re: [ECOLOG-L] Fwd: Publish and be wrong?]
Very interesting read indeed. I recently came across the Biogeosciences
journal (http://www.biogeosciences.net/index.html), and I really like
their proposed model for publication...
