Topic: Linnaeus meets the Internet

[sam]

Botany may finally be entering the electronic age, as four plants become a test case for naming species in purely electronic journals.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100505/full/news.2010.221.html

[Clive]

Do you think these online-only journals might be a problem for future scientists Sam?  The good thing about paper journals is that they can be archived for hundreds of years yet can still be accessed.  All other forms of media change rapidly and have a very limited lifespan.  Nobody has the means to study photographic plates taken of the night sky by late 19th century and early 20th century astronomers so they have all been thrown away.  Nobody can access those large tapes of computer data which were so popular in the 50's and 60's.  Who has a 5.25" floppy drive to read 80's data?  Get my drift?  Don't think for one moment that methods of online storage won't change within the next 20 years and make online journals irretrievable. 

[Simon]

Seems a very valid point, Clive. 

[sam]

I think you have a point Clive - but from what I can tell Universities still have paper copies... well in astronomy I know this to be the case. I read most of my papers online but the Uni has to have a subscription and as part of that their library has paper copies of each issue. Now in terms of online only ones - I see an issue, indeed - unless we just maintain digital libraries forever... which of course isn't guaranteed.  There is a resistance to this type of publishing in astronomy and I see the big journals out-lasting these upstarts, assuming they change their online model, thus there will still be paper copies. I think Astronomy has this quite nicely. The journals take you paper and put it only and print out, but don't stop you put their non-editted version on arxiv, which is a free public paper database, thus there are slight differences but everyone can see all the work going on without much hassle - and if worried the paper search engines even allow you to retrieve the public version, or the one from the paid journal.

I guess I see an issue, but not if they are smart.