Jane wrote: > The journal's contribution is coordinating peer review, formatting the > paper and, most importantly, disseminating the paper.
It seems we are approaching the time when journals become obsolete for these functions. We could do all this through the internet right now. Imagine just posting your paper here on ECOLOG-L, where anybody can review it and comment publicly. It would make for more dynamic review and discussion of research. So now it seems the main function of journals is to make the publication "official" so it will count toward retention and tenure and other professional tally counting. Joe Gathman Assistant Professor University of Wisconsin - River Falls "It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." -George Carlin > Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 14:26:26 -0400 > From: Jane Shevtsov <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Open Access and Intellectual Imperialism > Approval required > > Strictly speaking, you're correct. However, the purpose of > copyright > law is to reward people who do creative work. That would be > us. The > journal's contribution is coordinating peer review, > formatting the > paper and, most importantly, disseminating the paper. For > this, they > get paid by subscribers and sometimes page charges. That > seems more > than fair -- really, the for-profit journals should be > paying us, the > way magazines pay writers. >
