I came upon two more interesting arguments for new ways of scientific knowledge sharing at the <a href="http://ResearchGate.net">ResearchGate.net</a> where a discussion is running on the topics of Science2.0 and Open Access:<div>
<br></div><div>Eberhard Hilf of the Institute of Scientific Networking in Oldenburg (Germany) writes:</div><div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:22px;text-align:left">"In the new digital age, do scientific journals serve science researchers?</span></div>
<div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:22px;text-align:left;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">No, they don't. And the very concept of the 'paper in a scientific journal' does not fit the needs either anymore.</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:22px;text-align:left;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Neither is it complete, giving all the details if wished by the reader, nor is it compact enough to be easily re-used for own research. Thus we need new forms scientific information transfer chunks.</span> "</div>
<div><br></div><div>and Vladimir Teif (Deutsches Krebsforschungs Zentrum) writes:</div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:22px;text-align:left;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">-- I can give you an example of the traditional publishing system where the author always pays to the publisher: This is the advertisement industry. The author of the advertisement pays to the publisher to publish the advertisement. This is exactly what the open-access business model is. These scientific publications are equivalent to paid advertisements, and their purpose is mostly to advertise the work of the group to help fundraising, not to disseminate scientific knowledge.</span>
</div><div><br></div><div>TOM<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Nick Barnes <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nb@climatecode.org">nb@climatecode.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:09, Björn Brembs <<a href="mailto:b.brembs@googlemail.com">b.brembs@googlemail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Only having one Science paper made me not make the shortlist<br>
> on a number of my applications, I've been told.<br>
> How would that change?<br>
<br>
</div>That would change instantly if - as you describe - publication in a<br>
top journal became an indicator simply of ability to pay, rather than<br>
of quality. Hiring committees don't care about ability to pay.<br>
<br>
This is what I mean when I say that top journals are terrified of<br>
losing their status. They won't do anything which deters a<br>
significant proportion of authors. There is a significant snob value,<br>
which feeds back into citation counts and impact factor, but<br>
ultimately a journal is only indispensable if it has high-quality<br>
content.<br>
<br>
In any case, this is a ridiculous hypothetical. Has it happened with<br>
the NIH mandate? I don't believe so (although nobody has answered my<br>
request for first-hand experience). So why are we even discussing it?<br>
<div class="im HOEnZb">--<br>
Nick Barnes, Climate Code Foundation, <a href="http://climatecode.org/" target="_blank">http://climatecode.org/</a><br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>