On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Marvin Margoshes wrote: > There are some disadvantages to online publishing. Perhaps the most > important is the lack of means for long-term archiving...
Ah me! > Scientists can be conservative in their habits, and very many are reluctant > to give up the familiar printed page.... > In my view, the transition from print-dominance to > online-dominance will take five to ten years.... > Those on this Forum who have advocated steps to force a more rapid > transition have not, in my opinion, made a compelling case for haste. > > The defect with this Forum was that the most important players in scholarly > publishing weren't well represented. I mean the authors and readers, not > the editors, publishers, and librarians. To test armchair pronouncements such as these against real evidence, I can only patiently counsel yet again having a look at the way 20,000 authors a year and 65,000 readers a day are voting with their eyes and fingers even as we speak... http://xxx.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/todays_stats Stevan Harnad
