Eric, To understand why what you say is fundamental for moving the World forward in these days, I suggest anyone to listen at the following speech. A long speech. Really inspiring.
Eben Moglen keynote - "Innovation under Austerity" http://youtu.be/G2VHf5vpBy8 mic 2012/7/26 Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com>: > Some recent developments in academic publishing are encouraging. As people > know, the UK is considering a bill that will require that journal articles > reporting on government-funded research be provided to the public free of > charge not long after they have been published. I think there are similar > efforts underway in the US, and the National Institutes of Health and > institutions such as Harvard University have already taken steps in this > general direction. The Economist provides a nice report on the UK bill: > > http://www.economist.com/node/21559317?fsrc=scn/tw/te/mt/broughttobook > > In this context the arXiv preprint server is an interesting phenomenon. > Some people are putting papers up on arXiv for general feedback and then > submitting to journals afterwards for the imprimatur. It looks like > phys.org is willing to go straight to arXiv for its coverage, as in the case > of this paper on primordial black holes: > > http://phys.org/news/2011-05-theory-black-holes-predate-big.html > > That paper was eventually published in the International Journal of Modern > Physics D (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011arXiv1104.3796C). The sequence > of events -- whether phys.org went to arXiv or first or noticed that the > paper was to appear in the journal -- isn't clear and probably not all that > important. I suspect it's just a matter of time before self-publication on > preprint servers becomes the de facto way of sharing experimental results > and theoretical explorations. Perhaps in the age of blogs and the > twenty-four hour news cycle, there are pressures on scientists to get > something out quickly in order to establish priority. In my experience the > papers on arXiv run the gamut of quality and conventionality. Some papers > are very conventional and professionally done, and others are basically > notes covering theories that are sure to be highly controversial. If arXiv > has a quality control function, it appears to be quite permissive. > > As more and more people around the world come online, these preprints and > the free courses made available by MIT and Stanford and other universities > could become an important part of the tertiary education of a large number > of people. This seems like another disruptive development whose > consequences are hard to foresee. > > Eric >
