Palaeontologia Electronica in an increasingly open-access world

Abstract

When Palaeontologia Electronica (PE) published its first issue in 1998 (the first electronic palaeontological peer-reviewed journal), the primary goal of the journal was to harness the incredible technological potential of electronic publishing: speeding up the process of technical communication and making the emergent web-based technologies available to palaeontologists (MacLeod and Patterson, 1998). Our journal is now very much on the apogee of electronic publishing, although rapid evolution of the nature of scientific dissemination outside the traditional avenues of scholarly publishing means that we cannot afford to stagnate in this pursuit. It is therefore fitting that one of the big changes PE has experienced over the last few years has been the addition of several new editorial board members, all of whom are early to midcareer palaeontologists who have grown up with an innate appreciation of the internet’s technological potential, allowing us to readily adapt to the very different cyberspace of today’s World Wide Web. In 2015 the journal no longer faces the challenge of academic acceptance of electronic publication. This form of publication has now been firmly accepted by the vast majority of working scientists, and moving forward PE must instead look at the new challenges facing professional researchers, and particularly for PE, non-professional readers and contributors. In the 21st century, no other issue has shaken the academic publication institution more than the rise of, and push for, open-access (OA). In 2011, approximately 17% of all articles were published as open-access (Laskoo and Bjork, 2012), and this number is set to rise dramatically. The open-access movement is firmly rooted in the philosophy that publically funded research should be made free and available to all. In a world of different funding models of open-access, and different levels of open-access, Palaeontologia Electronica wears its OA credentials on its sleeve and has always done so. The increased pressure for OA has driven many traditional for-profit scholarly publishers to offer OA articles through an article processing charge, with most subscription organisations now publishing hybrid journals, giving the authors the choice to make their articles OA for a fee. Several publishing groups have also launched OA only journals funded through article processing fees. Article processing charges across OA journals can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars (Solomon and Bjork, 2012). Entirely thanks to the support of our sponsoring societies, The Palaeontological Association, The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and The Paleontological Society, as well as the Western Interior Paleontological Society, PE maintains a completely free publication process for both authors and readers. The claim that higher processing charges leads to greater journal impact and prestige does not always hold