<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Very few journals are indeed 'journals' (in the sense of presenting 'daily' updates on the state of knowledge), except perhaps the likes of PLOS One and arXiv. So what we traditionally think of as journals have had their heyday. They functioned as an organising mechanism in the time that that was useful and necessary. That function has been taken over, and become far more sophisticated, by computer and web technology. That doesn't mean journals, as an organising concept, will disappear anytime soon. I give them a few decades at least. To be sure, their print-on-paper manifestations are likely to go much earlier, but that's not a conceptual, but just a practical thing.<div><br></div><div>'Journals' are already for the largest part virtual — just concepts, like 'papers'. Skeuologues from a bygone era. Perhaps the likes of PLOS One and arXiv should be called 'courant' and 'papers' should be referred to as 'articles'.</div><div><br></div><div>By the way, I see articles also change in the way they are being used and perceived. They will more and more be 'the record' and less and less a means of communication. That, by the way, establishing and curating the permanent record, is no sinecure. I used to call the scientific literature "the minutes of science" (<a href="http://opendepot.org/1291">http://opendepot.org/1291</a>). They need to be taken, but after they've been approved, most minutes are only ever read in case of doubt or problems. One reason is of course the 'overwhelm' of literature (see e.g. Fraser & Dunstan, On the impossibility of being expert, BMJ 2010, <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815">http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815</a>). 'Reading' in order to 'ingest' knowledge will be replaced by large-scale machine-assisted analysis of, and reasoning with, data and assertions found in the literature. Organisation of the literature in the current prolific number of journals — and the concomitant fragmentation it entails — will be more of a hindrance than a help.</div><div><br></div><div>Initiatives such as nanopublications (<a href="http://nanopub.org">http://nanopub.org</a>) and, in the field of pharmacology, OpenPHACTS (<a href="http://www.openphacts.org">http://www.openphacts.org</a>), are the harbingers of change.</div><div><br></div><div>Jan Velterop</div><div><div><br></div><div> <br><div><div>On 9 Nov 2012, at 12:03, Ross Mounce wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 9 November 2012 11:09, Steve Hitchcock <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk" target="_blank">sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Ross, In your view, but in this case what would be the point of any journal?<br><br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Steve, you've got it in one here: what <i>is</i> the point of journals? </div><div>Many have asked this question before e.g. Decoupling the scholarly journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2012.00019">http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2012.00019</a> , but here's my take:<br>
<br>They're a vestigial concept in modern research. </div><div><br></div><div>Journals made sense from 1665-200X? (a fuzzy endpoint as the usefulness fades out at a different rate in different subjects depending upon web-technology uptake in different research communities). Research is digital now. Even most of the ancient legacy literature in my domain (Biology) has been digitized via initiatives such as <a href="http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/">http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/</a> </div>
<div><br></div><div>An example: Do <i>any </i>practicing Bioinformaticians read <i>paper </i>(deadtree) journals to keep up with the latest research? I would think not. Paper journals, and thus the 'journal concept' are useless to me - journals were just a way of economically distributing physical copies of similar research papers to interested recipients, and along way became a significant way of generating income & profit for Learned Societies & commercial publishers (you know the rest...).<br>
<br>Admittedly, I gather many in the humanities are still reliant on the deadtree format to keep up with new research - but perhaps by 2020 even this will change as the benefits of the digital medium are fully realised - when all academics have either a Kindle, iPad, smartphone, laptop... and those that have eschewed technology in favour of paper journals quietly retire? I'm not even against paper copies either, if people want them a) for short papers I suggest printing a copy oneself might be more efficient b) for very long papers POD services might be better than 'journals' all things considered IMO. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I don't need 'journals'. I just need effective filters to find the content I want amongst the ~2million papers that are published this year, and the ~48million from all years previously (basing my figures on <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20100308">http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20100308</a> ).<br>
<br>Perhaps we need standardized metadata tags, MeSH terms, keywords, and most importantly the ability to index, query & mine the *full* text to find what we want and Open Bibliographic Data to clearly see who cites who. But we don't need journals for any of that. All of the functions of the journal can be better done independently of the integrated-package of functions we called 'the journal'.<br>
<br>Is there any function I've missed that we do need 'journals' for? Journals are just an additional metadata tag to me with little or no added information content that can't be found in the fulltext or metadata of the paper.</div>
<div><br></div><div><br>I hope this provokes some thought...</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Ross<br><br>PS this is of course very relevant to Open Access. The sooner the digital medium for research is explicitly preferred as the normal mechanism for distribution & consumption, rather than as an 'alternative' or 'complementary' option to paper journals, the sooner the inevitability of Open Access (in whatever form, Green or Gold) will be realised, right? <br>
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