Re: Electronic Publishing

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Fellow Paleonetters:

I have followed with interest the discussion over the last few days
pertaining to  "manuscripts on the web"  and electronic publishing in
general.  With the explosive growth of the www (1704% in the last year
alone) we are on the verge of a revolution as great as the invention of the
printing press.  As happened in the aftermath of that great innovation
there will be casualties in the aftermath of our information revolution.  A
lot of 15th century monks who did not run out to obtain a new fangled
printing press, and doggedly continued to spend all their time copying
books by hand, eventually had to find something else to do.

This "monk" metaphor can be extended to our present-day  paleontological
journals.  The proliferation of journals in the last few years, accompanied
by tremendous increases in publication costs has made it increasingly
difficult for universities libraries, let alone individual researchers, to
continue subscribing to many journals.  I know that our library has
discontinued several journals this year, regrettably Lethaia among them.  I
see the advent of the www as the salvation of many journals that might
otherwise disappear in the next few years.  There is no reason why a rapid
turn-around, high quality, fully peer reviewed electronic paleontological
journal could not be set up immediately.  With the exception of systematic
treatments, which according to the current ICZN, are not permitted to be
published in electronic form, any paleontological subject can be dealt with
just as successfully in an electronic journal as a paper one.  With
increased band width and the use of new HTML standards that are enhancing
parameters like table production, text columns, and image transmission
(e.g. interlacing of images and defining image size in html code), the
problems experienced by readers of recent www PaleoNet Forum contributions
are gone.

Yesterday I took an old manuscript and pasted it into my new copy of Adobe
Page Mill (a really easy www authoring tool that permits one to create www
documents in wysiwyg form - the program itself generates the html code in
the background).  In thirty minutes I had the entire manuscript formatted
with color graphics included.  You know what?  It looked better that the
journal version did!  I challenge many of the journal layout people to
match my timing (and price - an electronic journal would be a fraction of
the cost of a regular one).  The time has come for us to take advantage of
this great opportunity and launch an electronic paleontological journal.
Come on all of you journal editors out there: don't be monks! Carpe Diem!

Tim Patterson



__________________________________________________________________________
Dr. R. Timothy Patterson               Telephone: 613-520-2600 ex 4425
Associate Professor                          FAX: 613-520-4490
Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center         e-mail: tpatters@ccs.carleton.ca
and Department of Earth Sciences             WWW: http://superior.
Carleton University                                  carleton.ca/~tpatters
Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6
CANADA