On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 6:47 PM, Jan Velterop <[email protected]> wrote:
On 15 May 2012, at 17:12, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:
With due respect, Jean-Claude, but there is absolutely nothing that stops
the scientific community from organising itself, select editors and
editorial boards and establish journals. In principle, that is. In
practice, well, they don't do it, at least not to a sufficient degree. It
is this academic inertia that gave publishers an opportunity to fill the
gap.
There are several areas where academics manage peer-review:
* student theses
* new courses
* promotion boards
* grant reviews
* workshop proceedings
I have participated in all of these (as I am sure many other readers have).Â
Academics can manage this if they have_to/need_to. The last two, in particular,
approach the scale required for publications.
I presume 'searchability' means discoverability here,
and I'm pretty sure all Elsevier articles and any
articles published by any serious publisher, for profit
or NfP, are fully indexed by Google and their ilk.
Searching in general for literature on any publisher's
journal platform site other than for specific articles
you know or suspect have been published by that
publisher, is naive.Â
The intrinsic "competition" of the publishing industry means that searchability
becomes similar to constructing a journey out of multiple transport operators.
The apparent "competition" actually holds back progress and adds very little
other than (unnecessary) visual effects.
Again, there is absolutely nothing, in principle, that stops the
scientific community from organising itself and establishing a
comprehensive reference and abstract database. In the life sciences
it's been done by PubMed (admittedly not quite academics themselves,
but at least an academic funding body, the NIH). Why don't they do
it?
PubMed has huge constraints imposed by publishers. For example there is a limit
of two publications for download. You cannot systematically download Pubmed.
The NIH is among the most advanced informatics organizations in the world. The
Entrez system - introduced in the later 1980s was stunningly imaginative. They
would do all of this and much more *if they were allowed to*. But one squeak of
doing something better than the publishers and the latter send their hired dogs
to congress - and yes, that include Elsevier. PubChem - a free index of
chemistry? The ACS denounced it as "socialized science" and did their best to
kill it. A free government resource in the US competing against the holy private
sector In which the ACS puts itself) had to be challenged.
The only credible myth-busters would be academics themselves. Where
are they?Â
Following the laws of thermodynamics
Universities have enough resources to change the publishing system. (first law)
Change requires reorganizing finances and collaboration (second law)
Universities will never collaborate (third law)
Â
P.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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