• Scholarly journals are obsolete as the primary vehicle for scholarly communication. The recent furor over "cold fusion," for example, developed entirely outside the scholarlyjournal process. We need to harness available technologies to reform the entire system of scholarly communication. The $500-million spent annually on journal subscriptions could finance a new system. Five years from now, the new system could be a reality-if university presidents, foundation directors, scholars, and librarians choose to create this 21st-century option. Here's how it could work: Scholars in all disciplines could ''publish'' their articles on the Scholarly Communication System, an electronic network on which they could also read other publications. As a scholar completed an article or paper, it would be sent electronically to the system, where it would be assigned a category and cross-referenced to other relevant categories. Given the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of much scholarly work, the capacity to alert readers in one subject area to articles published in other areas could help build important links among disciplines. The system could provide three new capabilities: a "notes and comments" section, citation tracking, and a usage log. Scholars with valid passwords, obtained by paying a modest annual fee, could leave signed statements related to the article's content in the comments field immediately after an article entered the system. The comments could contain suggestions for references to other literature, ideas for clarifying arguments, rebuttals of arguments, notes of possible errors in data or interpretation, and even compliments on the quality of the contribution. The system would permit such responses to be added only to the comments section. Signatures on signed comments woufd be checked automatically to assure their validity (through a program matching names with users' authorized numbers). The new system also would be a valuable communication tool for academics while their research was under way. In the "search only" mode, researchers could seek data from all the content tracks and could gain access to archival as well as to current files. The system would be available 22 hours a day to anyone paying the hourly usage and printing charges, leaving 2 hours of "down" time for maintenance. After an article had been in the system for six months so that comments could be collected
Two University Librarians look at OCLC's CORC pr0.iect from the perspective of how i t helps achieve thc goals of the cvolution of the virtual library as well as their individual library goal of creating an all-inclusive catalog of thc information provided to library uscrs.They also examine the implications of the CORC process on library organizations, including the potential to involve a much widcr range ot participants in a CORC prqiect. [ A r t i c l e copies a v a i l a b l e fur a feefiom The H u w o r d~ n o c r r r r w~r I l e l i v e r y Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address:
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