Could we please bury access-denial, actually, before we bury journals, notionally?
Access-denial continues, for decades now, since the Web made it possible to put an end to it, once and for all, yet there seems to be no end of speculative future-casting in its stead, while research access and impact just continue to be lost, needlessly, year in and year out... Stevan Harnad On 2012-11-09, at 8:06 AM, Jan Velterop <velte...@gmail.com> wrote: > Very few journals are indeed 'journals' (in the sense of presenting 'daily' > updates on the state of knowledge), except perhaps the likes of PLOS > One and arXiv. So what we traditionally think of as journals have had > their heyday. They functioned as an organising mechanism in the time > that that was useful and necessary. That function has been taken over, > and become far more sophisticated, by computer and web technology. > That doesn't mean journals, as an organising concept, will disappear > anytime soon. I give them a few decades at least. To be sure, their > print-on-paper manifestations are likely to go much earlier, but that's > not a conceptual, but just a practical thing. > > 'Journals' are already for the largest part virtual — just concepts, like > /papers'. Skeuologues from a bygone era. Perhaps the likes of PLOS > One and arXiv should be called 'courant' and 'papers' should be referred > to as 'articles'. > > By the way, I see articles also change in the way they are being used > and perceived. They will more and more be 'the record' and less and > less a means of communication. That, by the way, establishing and > curating the permanent record, is no sinecure. I used to call the scientific > literature "the minutes of science" (http://opendepot.org/1291). They > need to be taken, but after they've been approved, most minutes are > only ever read in case of doubt or problems. One reason is of course > the 'overwhelm' of literature (see e.g. Fraser & Dunstan, On the impossibility > of being expert, BMJ 2010, http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815). > 'Reading' in order to 'ingest' knowledge will be replaced by large-scale > machine-assisted analysis of, and reasoning with, data and assertions > found in the literature. Organisation of the literature in the current > prolific > number of journals — and the concomitant fragmentation it entails — will > be more of a hindrance than a help. > > Initiatives such as nanopublications (http://nanopub.org) and, in the field > of pharmacology, OpenPHACTS (http://www.openphacts.org), are the harbingers > of change. > > Jan Velterop > > > On 9 Nov 2012, at 12:03, Ross Mounce wrote: > >> >> >> On 9 November 2012 11:09, Steve Hitchcock <sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: >> Ross, In your view, but in this case what would be the point of any >> journal? >> >> >> Steve, you've got it in one here: what is the point of journals? ...
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