Gregory M. Lamb “Is this the end of the scholarly journal?” http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p14s02-stss.htm
とはいっても、この記事は専ら理系絡みの話ではあるが。
科学研究のプレゼンテーションの仕方はずっと”n article published in a scholarly journal”という方法が続けられている。
記事では２つの新しい試みが紹介される。Public Library of Science (PLoS)によって開始されたThe PLoS ONE*1とThe Journal of Visualized Experiments(JoVE)*2。前者について；
But science's hidebound traditions are changing. The Internet has opened up new forms of publishing in which anyone in the world can find and read a scientific paper. And papers themselves are becoming more interactive, leading readers to the underlying data, videos, and discussions that augment their value. With blogs and e-books providing easy means of self-publishing, some observers are speculating that scholarly journals and their controversial system of peer reviews may not be needed at all.
また、後者は”a short video showing how an experiment is done is better than thousands of words that attempt to describe it”という考え方に基づく”a kind of YouTube for researchers”であるという*3。既に最初の３か月で18本のヴィデオがpostされている。
At PLoS ONE, which aspires to be a general science journal along the lines of Science and Nature, the papers themselves are only a starting point. Readers can annotate, comment on, and critique the findings: Their contributions become permanently attached to the original article. At least one commentator has likened this process to a kind of "electronic Talmud," in which the original document receives elaborate commentary and discussion that over time adds greatly to its value.In coming months, says Chris Surridge, the managing editor of PLoS ONE, readers also will be able to rate papers on their quality, such as how surprising or groundbreaking the results were – much in the way Netflix subscribers rate movies they rent using one- to five-star ratings. In this sense, PLoS ONE is moving toward a Web 2.0 model, which focuses on user-generated content strategies already used by websites such as Digg.com, Slashdot.org, or Amazon.com.
従来の学術雑誌の危機はその査読制度への不信に最も現れている；
The PLoS ONEのアプローチはそれへのオルタナティヴであるといえる；
A year ago, the respected US journal Science was forced to retract two papers it had published about stem cells. The articles had been submitted by a South Korean team led by Hwang Woo-Suk. Peer reviewers, as well as the editors, had failed to detect the fraud.In general, peer reviewers, themselves researchers pressed for time, don't try to re-create experiments and rarely ask to see the raw data that supports a paper's conclusions. While peer review is expected to separate the wheat from the chaff, it's "slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, prone to bias, easily abused, poor at detecting gross defects, and almost useless for detecting fraud," summed up one critic in BMJ, the British medical journal, in 1997.
また、記事では、コーネル大学によってホストされているオンライン論文のデータ・ベースarXiv*4も紹介されている。
PLoS ONE takes a different tack. While articles receive a basic screening, they don't have to attain the standard of representing groundbreaking work in order to be published. An article only has to be based on solid science. The idea is that the more valid research is published, the better, as it contributes to an online database.
*3:文系、例えば心理学では、実験そのものの画像の公開は被験者のプライヴァシー問題という壁に突き当たるんじゃないか。
