Model Of Scholarly Publishing Research Articles

One Year of PLoS Computational Biology

One Year of PLoS Computational Biology

Tragedy of the Commons Revisited: Librarians, Publishers, Faculty and the Demise of a Public Resource

The model of scholarly publishing can be reduced, in economic terms, to a Tragedy of the Commons, whereby the individual interests of publishers, libraries and scholars are in conflict with what is in the best interest of the public good. Serials inflation, price discrimination, and site-license pricing are all manifestations of this dysfunctional economic model. Moral arguments to change human behavior are not effective because they do not provide individual incentives. Technology alone is also not a viable solution since it fails to change the underlying human behavior that is driving the economic model. Abandoning the current system of publishing is both risky and costly. This paper argues for a reintermediation of the library as governor of the public scholarly commons, but illustrates that these solutions are in conflict with the mission of the library profession.

Editorial

A range of challenges besets editors of professional academic journals. The role of a journal is to chronicle the context within which people function. Published evaluations are provided to ensure readers can develop an enhanced perception of the world within which they live. A journal has to ensure it covers the areas central to its readers’ lives and work. The ability to meet this pressure for instantaneous dissemination of the written word is limited by the journal publication cycle. There has been very little change in the scholarly communication model for over 300 years, but the introduction of the Internet has provided options for development. Various institutions, as well as individuals, are exploring concepts of self-archiving and internal repositories to quicken communication. Rather than seeking to disseminate via journals they are looking to make available their research via the World Wide Web. Published journals will have to establish the implications of these trends and how they adapt when organizations take responsibility for archiving their intellectual wealth. David Prosser from Sparc Europe UK gave a presentation around these possibilities at a recent international conference.1 There was also a related forum on open access in medical research publishing held at the British Library in London on Monday 4 April 2003. Developments and issues in new models of scholarly publishing were discussed. It is becoming apparent that librarians working in the health sector will need to consider how their services are impacted by these changes. For those journals covering information and communication technology areas, the rapid developments cause specific problems in the ability to record current trends. Similarly, journals involved with health disciplines face difficulties in ensuring they have not been overtaken by topical changes. For a journal such as Health Information and Libraries Journal covering both … A very recent example is provided by the services supplied from the NHS England National Core Content. This development will affect and improve access to information for all health professionals in England. Sally Hernando (Chair of the National Core Content Group) and Scott Gibbens (Project Manager) have kindly provided the following guest editorial outlining the Core Content work.

Quality control in scholarly publishing: A new proposal

AbstractThe Internet has fostered a faster, more interactive and effective model of scholarly publishing. However, as the quantity of information available is constantly increasing, its quality is threatened, since the traditional quality control mechanism of peer review is often not used (e.g., in online repositories of preprints, and by people publishing whatever they want on their Web pages).This paper describes a new kind of electronic scholarly journal, in which the standard submission‐review‐publication process is replaced by a more sophisticated approach, based on judgments expressed by the readers: in this way, each reader is, potentially, a peer reviewer. New ingredients, not found in similar approaches, are that each reader's judgment is weighted on the basis of the reader's skills as a reviewer, and that readers are encouraged to express correct judgments by a feedback mechanism that estimates their own quality. The new electronic scholarly journal is described in both intuitive and formal ways. Its effectiveness is tested by several laboratory experiments that simulate what might happen if the system were deployed and used.

Globalization, Consolidation and the Growth of the Giants

The creation of publishing conglomerates and the emergence of purchasing consortia are changing the economic model of scholarly publishing and the process of individual collection management. But will the giants fundamentally change the serials community? Despite the undoubted impact of consolidation, the needs of authors and readers will predominate, and the place of quality control and peer review, though under challenge, will be central to formal scholarly communication. Nevertheless, both publishers and librarians will have to change their traditional cultures and processes, and work in collegial alliances. Size and dominance will be factors impacting the serials community. This paper surveys the likely impact of the giants on the serials community in the next decade: alliances between publishers and other information providers, the continuing importance of quality control and peer review, and the needs of authors and readers. Some informed speculation will challenge the complacency and conservatism of many in the serials community.

Economic and intellectual value in existing and new paradigms of electronic scholarly communication

The function of this article is to examine both the current state of scholarly communication and its prospects. Among the issues to be examined are the viability of the present model of scholarly publishing, the cost of the delivery of unit articles and the difficulty of assigning value to this whole process. The operating principle of this article is that the scholarly communication process is a partnership between a number of players, but that while the nature and content of the relationships are changing, there needs to be a serious engagement with the many issues if the process is to move onwards.

And They Were There-Reports of Meetings-Alternative Models of Scholarly Publishing in Higher Education

And They Were There-Reports of Meetings-Alternative Models of Scholarly Publishing in Higher Education

CIAO: A New Model for Scholarly Publishing

CIAO: A New Model for Scholarly Publishing

The Changing Economic Model of Scholarly Publishing: Uncertainty, Complexity, and Multimedia Serials

Scholarly publishing is undergoing a transformation that affects every participant in the information chain. Serials used to be a relatively uncomplicated activity, driven by the need of scholars and researchers to publish. Since the early 1980s, both journal price inflation and the growth in the number of journals and the numbers of papers published have outstripped the ability of even the most lavishly funded library to purchase what faculty and students demand. At the same time, modern technology has offered us the opportunity to develop new ways of distributing scholarly literature that offer the researcher facilities and qualities that cannot be undertaken in the print medium

The Changing Economic Model of Scholarly Publishing: Uncertainty, Complexity, and Multi-media Serials

Scholarly publishing is undergoing a transformation that affects every participant in the information chain. Serials used to be a relatively uncomplicated activity, driven by the need of scholars and researchers to publish (see Fig 1). Until the 1980s, libraries found it possible to maintain coherent collections of the journals required to serve the teaching and research needs of their individual institutions, albeit at the expense of their monograph collections. Since that time, both journal price inflation and the growth in the number of journals and the numbers of papers published have outstripped the ability of even the most lavishly funded library to purchase what faculty and students demand. At the same time, modern technology has, in the last few years, offered us the opportunity to develop new media of distribution for scholarly literature: media that offer the researcher

Preprint Servers: A New Model for Scholarly Publishing?

ABSTRACTPuts forward the proposition that preprint servers, which were originally designed as an informal publishing mechanism for the distribution of preprints, contain many of the characteristics of traditional scholarly publishing, and could conceivably serve as a new model of scholarly publishing in the electronic environment.