Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
articles out in bundles.
Freed from that tyranny, there is no longer any need for journal
publishers to hold back from publishing finished articles as soon as they
have been reviewed and thoroughly prepared. Issues, frequency and
numbering no longer matter. What continue to matter are the fact that
a particular article was deemed worthy of publication by a particular
journal, and the date on which it was published.
What the digital realm, with its relatively low barriers to
publication, also allows us to do is to recognize different strata of
scholarliness and give each one an equal treatment in the digital
environment. This is both a blessing and a curse, and it actually
reinforces the value of the journal brand. If a peer-reviewed research
article is indistinguishable at first glance from an unreviewed opinion
piece, then the imprimatur of an established journal's trusted editorial
board becomes more important than ever to those who need quickly to
identify papers that will likely be of high relevance and quality. At the
same time, the scholarly world is enriched by the participation of a
greater diversity of thinkers and by the presence of materials that would
never have been distributed in print formats. Some of what finds its way
into the conversation will be garbage, but much of it will be (and has
already been shown to be) worthwhile.
Pre-print services
One specific threat to the traditional journal is the pre-print aggregator.
Services such as the arXiv (a pre-print server designed specifically to
facilitate access to raw data and preliminary research results) and the
proliferating institutional repositories serve a different function from that
of traditional peer-reviewed journals, but the two are not entirely
complementary. Before such a thing as the arXiv was possible, the
function that it now serves - the sharing of research information - was
performed partly by informal exchange between individual scientists and
partly by publication in formal journals. There were many scientists who
would have benefited from having access to preliminary versions of papers
but did not have the contacts necessary to take advantage of informal
channels and therefore had to wait until the formal versions were
published. Presumably, some of them would have been happy to make do
with the informal versions for much if not all of the time. Those are the
