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Are Academic Journals Obsolete?
Writing "Surely there is a better way," eggy78 asks "With the ability to get information anywhere in the world in seconds, and the virtually immediate obsolescence of any printed work, why are journals such an important part of academic research? Many of these journals take two or more years to print an article after it has been submitted, and the information is very difficult (or expensive) to obtain. Does this hinder technological advancement? There are certainly other venues for peer review, so why journals? What do they offer our society? Are they just a way to evaluate the productivity of professors?"
The only purpose of peer review is not quality control but control, period. It is a mechanism used by an elitist group to keep outsiders at bay. Thus science becomes immune to public scrutiny, not a very good thing. As Paul Feyerabend said, (paraphrasing) we did not get rid of the dictatorship of the one true religion to fall under the tyranny of another.
Peer review is an incestuous process that works for a while but eventually engenders ridiculously hideous monsters. Examples are time travel, cats that are both dead and alive when nobody is looking, parallel universes, dimensions that curled up into little balls so tiny as to be unobservable, etc... This is the reason that Feyerabend wrote in Against Method that "the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down in size and give them a more modest position in society."
The good news is that the internet is quickly making old style peer review obsolete. Like it or not, the entire world is our peer. If you got something good to offer, fight like hell to promote it and, if it's any good, the world will acknowledge your effort and compensate you accordingly. Just come out into the playground and show us what you got.
Most peer reviewed scientific papers are boring crap anyway. Your worth should not be how many papers you've published but what have you done that is useful?
The journals do a good job, for the most part, at keeping out well-paying stupidity. If your article is genuinely bad, you'll have a hard time getting it published anywhere high-profile. Really--you can come in with as much money as you want, and you still won't be considered relevant. If you disagree, please provide at least two examples.
The journals are not needed. There should be no censorship at all except for cases of criminal behavior. Everything should be published and the worldwide market of ideas is the right mechanism to decide what to retain and what to reject. That is why the internet is so important for the cross-pollination of ideas. Money is no object. Almost anybody and everybody who has access to a computer and the internet can publish their work, free of charge. Survival of the fittest. It is a beautiful thing.
Scientific journals, OTOH, discourage cross-pollination and encourage intellectual incest within a small group. Nobody but those within the group have the power to decide whether or not ideas generated by the group are valid. This is the reason that, even though a lot of what passes for science lately is laughable BS of the stinking kind, it is still surrounded with an aura of excellence. Why? Because the elite has managed to establish istself as the authority and uses the government (and government guns) to impose its authority on society and the classroom. It is the one true religion, all over again.
I don't know about you, but most of my articles were double-blind. I didn't know who my reviewers were, and they didn't know who I was.
So? Your reviewers did not become reviewers until they showed that their thought processes were acceptable to the elite. It is still an incestuous and elitist process. Not to mention extremely dangerous to the freedom of society. No group should have a bully (government imposed) pulpit that they can use to enforce their ideas upon others. Let the free market of ideas decide.