On 17 Feb 2010, at 17:06, Dana Roth wrote: > Isn't it more likely that researchers would be extra 'busy' trying to sort > out what is relevant from everything else on the web?
No. Are you suggesting that researchers are incapable of distinguishing research from "everything else on the web"? Without publishing companies, would we really be incapable of working out how to diseminate our work in high relevance, high visibility channels? Remember, the original question was "are researchers parasitic on publishing companies or vice versa". I am not claiming that researchers wouldn't re-invent something that looked remarkably like peer review or scholarly journals. I am only claiming that we can do that without the publishers assistance, whereas they can't do the research without our assistance. It's a dog/tail, boot/foot, "don't forget who is the service industry" kind of argument. --- Les Carr PS Neither am I claiming that we wouldn't actually want to reinvent something that looked like publishing companies (shock horror) to offload the tedious business of the bulk management of the reviewing and dissemination processes. However, look at which way round that happens. If researchers disappear (and who knows what Peter Mandelson cuts will do in the UK!) then the publishing companies are not likely to create their own scientific research establishments in order to have a convenient source of research information to publish.
