Re: electronica, continued

From
Date
First Norm wrote: 

> 'In fact, a number of the scientific professions' most prestigious
>journals don't even send all submitted mss out for objective peer-review,
>but instead rely on a small group of editors to decide what is and is not
>appropriate for consideration... Electronic publication could free us of the 
>economic constraints that require certain journals to reject otherwise
>excellent
>papers simply because they are too long, they have too many illustrations,
>the journal already has too much of a backlog, or the ms doesn't conform to 
>the intellectual "flavor of the month."'

To which Henry Gee replied:

>I disagree. Quality control has nothing to do with the medium in which the 
>journal appears. Neither has it anything to do with economics, at least not 
>directly. Sure, if electronic publication saves money, the savings should be 
>passed on to the subscribers (as Norm implies earlier). But these savings 
>must not be used as licence to print more papers (Norm, you can't have it 
>both ways). 

        Well, apparently HG doesn't ever read any journals other than
Nature and Science, eh. As a paleontologist (inverts) in communication with
numerous colleagues, I can attest to the vast number of high quality
manuscripts and monographs which are still sitting on desks because they're
"too long" or contain "too much taxonomic detail" (i.e. boring). The only
reason these haven't appeared in printed form by now is simply due to the
fact that PRINTING COSTS BIG BUCKS, AND JOURNALS THE SIZE OF  PHONE BOOKS
WOULD CAUSE A PUBLISHER TO GO BANKRUPT VERY QUICKLY! Consider the limited
distribution. Consider the quality of plate resolution we generally demand.
It all boils down to two obvious conclusions:

1.) electronic journals would save a lot of trees (do editors care about
this, really?) and allow folks from all over this planet to access
otherwise unobtainable data, in their own language (with the appropriate
translator),
2.) electronic journals would indeed be capable of containing up to twice
the number of 'papers' (there's that word again!) as a traditional printed
journal.

If our "worse fear" is that allowing more manuscripts per "issue" of an
electronic journal will somehow allow less-than-stellar science to slip
into the literature, then we're only fooling ourselves; there is already a
lot of less-than-stellar science published, and it got right through peer
review nonetheless. We all have seen, read, and/or poked fun at these type
of papers (for whatever reasons, mostly because it wasn't great science to
begin with). Maybe we've all published as such!

        More manuscripts per issue doesn't mean science goes down the
tubes, it only means more of the same . . .


Christopher Collom
Calgary, Alberta
Research: Inoceramidae of the world