Guest Editorial: How Scholarly Communication Should Work in the 21st Century

Abstract

• 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

The Impact of Internet-Based Electronic Resources on Formal Scholarly Communication in the Area of Library and Information Science: a Citation Analysis

“…As early as 1989, long before the Internet became a significant part of scholarly communication, Rogers and Hurt proposed a new scholarly communication system in the 21st century [55]. However, such a system is still far from being a reality.…”

The future of scholarly journal publishing

“…Delay between submission and publication means that a journal is not the most efficient means of aiding scholarly communication [42]. Publication delays are a particular hindrance for scientific, technical and medical communication, where the demand for current information is high:…”

Academic Librarians and the Library and Information Science Monograph: An Exploratory Study

“…They foresee its replacement by electronic networks. 7 The apparent preeminence of scholarly journals and perhaps, by extension, electronic networks calls into question the role and importance of other forms for conveying the written results of research and scholarship-for example, dissertations and monographs in LIS.…”