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SPOTLIGHT ON RESOURCES
Ask any researcher
to name the technical innovation that has made the most significant
impact
on their work within the last decade, and the
Internet is sure to garner many enthusiastic votes. Ask the publishers
of the world’s leading scientific journals to answer the same question
and they would probably come up with the same answer, albeit with less
enthusiasm. This month’s spotlight highlights both views in a National
Academy of Sciences report addressing the brave but confusing new world
of electronic scientific publishing. Electronic publishing is already changing the way people practice science, according to NAS President Bruce Alberts, Ph.D., particularly in encouraging collaborative and interdisciplinary research. This “powerful communication channel … allows us to include nations and people who would otherwise not be reachable. Equally important, by creating powerful search engines that can rapidly find desired information, we can make much better use of the vast store of data and scientific information available,” he writes in the report’s introduction. The report follows a May 2003 symposium on the topic that brought together researchers, commercial and not-for-profit journal publishers, the leaders of scientific societies, experts on open-source software and traditional printers. The symposium speakers discussed the legal implications of Internet publication, the challenges in publishing commercially subsidized science and how open and free publication of scientific material might affect national security. Many participants lauded electronic publication’s early successes, but “they tend to run headlong into the existing practices, policies and laws that govern traditional publishing,” University of Michigan researcher James Duderstadt, Ph.D., noted in the symposium’s keynote address. To read the full report, “Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications: Proceedings of a Symposium,” go here. |
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