Electronic Journals

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 I've just returned from 3 weeks in China, and has certainly been an
experience going from dodging ox carts while doing field work to this
very healthy debate over the future of scientific journals. While I
agree with much of the tenor of George McGhee's arguments (and incidentally
everyone should rush out and get his new book on the end-Devonian extinction)
that published journals have a real place in the world, I think we should
continue to consider the coming role of electronic distribution of information.

   Some perspective as a new Co-Editor of Paleobiology.  Although hardly
the lofty perspective of Henry Gee, the only limitation on publication in
Paleobiology is high-quality manuscripts.  Period.  Scott and I can and will
publish all the manuscripts appropriate for the journal that pass peer-
review, and in the next issue after the final ms. is recieved, no less!
Additionally, the Paleo Society has just introduced a new companion to
Paleobiology, Paleobiology Memoirs, for longer manuscripts, those with
lots of data, etc.  (see the forthcoming Issue 1 of 1996 for more details;
In a few weeks these will also be avaliable from the Paleosociety Home Page).

   The limit for us simply comes from manuscripts that are really worth
publishing.  And let me be the first to say it, I bet there isn't one of
us who hasn't sent off a ms which really didn't deserve to be published;
I know I have!  So from my perspective we do not, in general, need more
outlets for publication.  We probably have more avaliable now than we
have good science to publish in them.
   Where this is obviously not true is for taxonomic monographs.  I am
fortunate to work at a museum with such an outlet (should I ever have
the time to complete such a monograph) but there are fewer and fewer
such outlets. My sense is that publishing such works, while vital to
the future of our discipline, is increasingly difficult to accomplish.
Yet these are not the sort of thing that need the quick distribution of
WWW (I doubt many of you will rush out to read my soon-to-be finished
monograph on the Evolutionary History of the Omphalotrochidae, for example)
but they MUST be preserved for future generations.  For in Paleo we are
in the paradoxical situation that those contributions which are most
difficult to publish at the moment, and thus seemingly most amenable to
the WWW are also those which few will want to read RIGHT NOW, and which
we must preserve the longest.
  Interesting problem.
Doug Erwin, Paleobiology, NMNH