Making Sense of the Debate over Electronic Publication--论文代写范文精选

访问学术文献,可能加剧已严重的定价危机，阻碍了广泛的科学和学术信息。这些出版物包含的材料和成品是解决这场危机的关键,允许互联网是一个工具，促进公共资金资助的研究和奖学金的传播，而不是导致其转移到私人所有。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Abstract
This paper discusses the implications electronic dissemination for the peer-reviewed serial publication system. To make sense of this complex issue, it is helpful to view it from the perspective of the origins of the system and its three core functions, the ranking of scholarship, facilitating interactive communication among scholars, and creating a comprehensive archive of scholarly and scientific knowledge. Each of these core functions has different requirements that are to some extent overlapping but also to some extent in conflict. The Internet opens the possibility of developing a variety of different models of scholarly communication each fulfilling to a greater or lesser extent these three roles paper journals have served and possibly other roles that were not even conceivable prior to the development of world-wide electronic networks. The implications of electronic distribution for ownership and access to the scholarly literature are profound and likely to exacerbate the already serious serial pricing crisis that is hindering the widespread access to scientific and scholarly information. The scholarly community, which both authors the material contained in these publications and largely consumes the finish product holds the key to solving this crisis and allowing the Internet to be a vehicle for facilitating the dissemination of publicly funded research and scholarship rather than resulting in its transfer to private ownership.

Three years ago, Harold Varmus proposed the formation of PubMed Central1 as a federally funded freely accessible Internet-based archive of biomedical publications (Varmus, 1999). While it was not the first proposal for using the Internet to provide comprehensive and open access to scientific literature, the fact it was initiated by the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created a tremendous uproar in both the scientific and publishing communities. Although there was a great deal of support for the concept of creating such an archive, making it successful apparently took more influence than even the director of the NIH could muster. Varmus left the NIH shortly after dropping the PubMed Central bombshell and while the NIH went on to implement the archive, after three years it carries only a small fraction of the vast biomedical literature. 

The heated discussion over the proposal that took place during the spring and summer of 1999 is an interesting microcosm of the wider debate that continues on across scientific and scholarly diciplines.2 The controversy is motivated by two powerful forces that one way or another are going to result in a vastly different system for disseminating scientific and scholarly information. The first, generally referred to as the serial pricing crisis, reflects the dramatic rise in the cost of serial publications over the last 30 or 40 years and indirectly the commercialization of scholarly publishing.3 The second is the rapid conversion from paper to an electronic dissemination for peer-reviewed serial publications (Van Orsdel; Born, 2002).

At the heart of the debate is the question of who will control the literature and how it will be financed. The serial pricing crisis has stretched research library budgets to the breaking point and effectively cut the developing countries off from the scientific literature. At the same time, the shift to the electronic distribution of serial publications has caused many to question the need for the services provided by commercial publishers and whether the staggering increases in the cost of journals are warranted (Sosteric, Shi, and Wenker, 2001). To make sense of the controversy and begin to develop a coherent plan for reshaping the way scientific and scholarly information is disseminated, it is helpful to step back and look at the origin of our current journals and the complex multifaceted role they play as the fabric of scholarly communication.

The Origin of Peer-reviewed Serial Publications Although there is some controversy, it is generally agreed that the peer-review serial publication system originated from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London first published in 1665. What is intriguing is the motivation behind Henry Oldenburg’s ingenious creation. Oldenburg, then secretary of the society created the journal mainly out of a need to establish an orderly system for documenting the source of new or novel scientific ideas. In the words of Jean Claude Guédon, he created a kind of a “patent office” for scientific findings.4 By having a recognized vehicle for presenting new scientific ideas to their colleagues, the scientists or “natural philosophers” of that time could be reasonably sure they would receive appropriate credit for their ideas. Apparently, in the mid-seventeenth century this was no small matter. 

The concept of peer-review introduced in Oldenburg’s new creation was another ingenious and revolutionary ploy. It provided a means for the natural philosophers of the day to bestow a seal of worth and quality on the work of their peers at a time when such powers were generally reserved for nobility. From this humble beginning, rose the current scholarly publication system made up of thousands of descendants of the original Philosophical Transactions, which remarkably is still alive and well today. It seems ironic that the primary motive behind the origins of the system lies less in the lofty goal of disseminating knowledge than in assigning proper credit where it is due. Peerreviewed scholarly publications continue to play a variety of roles that have changed surprisingly little in nearly three and a half centuries. It is my hypothesis that much of the legitimate debate surrounding the transition from paper to electronic dissemination consciously or unconsciously revolves around the suitability of different media and organizational structures for fulfilling the different aspects of the multifaceted role journals play in scientific and scholarly communities.

The Roles of Scholarly Journals Although the motivation for creating Philosophical Transactions was primarily to limit controversy and promote an orderly scientific institution with a hierarchy based on peer-defined excellence, it is the role of disseminating information that forms the crux of the debate over how the scholarly publication process should be structured. To make sense of the debate, it is helpful to distinguish two somewhat different forms of dissemination that along with ensuring authors receive appropriate credit for their intellectual achievements form the three core purposes 2 fulfilled by scholarly journals. The first is facilitating the exchange of ideas among scholars working in the same narrow field that is the engine of progress. The second is forming a constantly evolving historical archive of scholarly thought.

These three roles of journals have different though overlapping requirements that are also to some extent in conflict. Science and scholarship is a social activity. Communication among scientists in a field is an essential ingredient for scientific progress and thrives on the free interactive exchange of ideas. The vetting of poor quality material through peer review provides little value for experts in a field while significantly hampering the interactive nature of this type of communication. Likewise, copyediting and typesetting are not particularly helpful as long as a manuscript adequately communicates the intended meaning and again just hinders the interactive nature of the communication. Traditional peer-reviewed journals have never served this role particularly well and their weaknesses have become increasingly apparent, as advances in technology have provided other more suitable options. This role has begun to shift to other forms of communication and in particular, preprint archives, the most notable of which is the arXiv.org in physics and computer science.5 It is interesting to note that while arXiv.org has become the predominant way physicists communicate, the traditional peer-reviewed physics journals remain strong and in fact have the highest average subscription fees of the journals in any scientific field!6 Peer-reviewed journals also serve as a continually updated comprehensive and authoritative archive of knowledge. 

While it is important that the archive reflect the current thought and findings within the field, the need for quick turnaround from submission to dissemination is far less crucial than for the role of supporting interactive communication among experts in a field. Ensuring the accuracy and quality of the information contained in a manuscript as well as the clarity of the writing and quality of the presentation is far more important and in some cases crucial.7 What is also crucial for this role is the robustness and stability of the archive. Traditional paper journals have served this role exceedingly well. Ironically, what are generally seen as limitations of paper as a media help make it well suited for this role. The time consuming and expensive task creating multiple copies and distributing them to hundreds if not thousands of research libraries creates an incredibly robust archive that is virtually indestructible with the exception of the slow breakdown of paper over time. It is not that in theory an equally robust electronic archive could be created, it is just not an inherent feature of the media.(论文代写)

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