Scholarly communication | Academic publishing | Knowledge exchange
by Ann Michael | January 24, 2019
It’s always a good time to think about the future, but somehow the
beginning of the year seems an especially appropriate time. With the
changes afoot in scholarly communication practices, sentiment, and
business models, this
For the moment, let’s put business models aside and think about the
form and flow of research and discovery. Is the article (pre- or
post-publication), book, journal, etc — our current containers — and the
byproducts that surround them the best we can do?
This month we asked the Chefs:
What form might scholarly communications take in the future?
Joe Esposito: As Bill Clinton said, It all depends on
what the meaning of “is” is. What do we mean by “the article”? If the
article is a report on a specific research topic, then the article will
be with us for a long time, as (barring witchcraft) we will always have
research and a need to communicate results. The article will differ from
what we mostly see today in that it will be integrated into a broad
suite of services, from discovery to analytics, as the act of
publication will be the equivalent of plugging into a network; the
principal audience will be machines. From such small contributions great
things will come. The standards for plugging in will be proprietary, as
the not-for-profit sector cannot compete with the narrowly focused aims
of someone bent on making money. There will be at most 2-3 such
networks of information in every broad discipline, and perhaps only 2-3
overall. The key policy question of this future will not be access but
antitrust. Silicon Valley witticism: A standard is a good thing;
everybody should have one.
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