It's worth mentioning that here in France there is a very big market for manga-style comic books read by adults and teens - most book stores have big shelves of these comics. Japanese manga and anime is also available and relatively popular. The same situation also exists in Germany and Italy - Japanese manga is very popular in these countries. English-speaking countries really seem to be the exception here in that in these countries manga is virtually unknown and comic books are seen as inferior to text-only books.
The arXiv has been, and currently is, extremely successful as a repository of pre-prints. Why don't you go and ask a physicist or an astronomer what the last paper journal she read was? Chances are that she read the preprint for free on the arXiv instead. In the biological sciences, we are denied this free access because of copyright restrictions imposed by the aggressive maintenance of a cartel by Elsevier and others. As a result, many universities simply cannot afford to pay for access to every journal they would like - even the University of Cambridge is currently struggling to spend £1M a year on journals. The publishers are making large profits from research which is funded by the taxpayers and from which scientists make no additional money. This is a ripoff, pure and simple.
The arXiv is not designed for discussion of results, which suggests that you are badly informed. But it is easy to envisage an arXiv-like system in which submitted papers are left 'open' for a period of several months for other scientists to comment on these papers. The British Medical Journal is currently unique in that it operates a similar "Rapid Response" system. I know a number of doctors who think this method of online comment is extremely useful. Such forum-based electronic peer-review of papers will surely work; if you think there is no chance of reasoned discussion on a forum such as Slashdot, why are you posting here?
PLOS does not go far enough.
on
Who Owns Science?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It seems to me that Michael Eisen and others setting up the PLOS initiative, are trying to appease the big publishing companies (Springer, Elsevier) by appearing not to threaten their cartel on the scientific discourse. The truth is that all scientific journals are dinosaurs from the age of paper. There is simply no reason why a larger version of the arxiv, with electronic peer-review (Slashdot as a model?), would not be a workable substitute for every scientific journal. If the PLOS organisers were to be true to their principles of open science, they would be pushing for an end to the journal system altogether. Physicists are far ahead of the bioscientists in this respect.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth mentioning that here in France there is a very big market for manga-style comic books read by adults and teens - most book stores have big shelves of these comics. Japanese manga and anime is also available and relatively popular. The same situation also exists in Germany and Italy - Japanese manga is very popular in these countries. English-speaking countries really seem to be the exception here in that in these countries manga is virtually unknown and comic books are seen as inferior to text-only books.
The arXiv is not designed for discussion of results, which suggests that you are badly informed. But it is easy to envisage an arXiv-like system in which submitted papers are left 'open' for a period of several months for other scientists to comment on these papers. The British Medical Journal is currently unique in that it operates a similar "Rapid Response" system. I know a number of doctors who think this method of online comment is extremely useful. Such forum-based electronic peer-review of papers will surely work; if you think there is no chance of reasoned discussion on a forum such as Slashdot, why are you posting here?
It seems to me that Michael Eisen and others setting up the PLOS initiative, are trying to appease the big publishing companies (Springer, Elsevier) by appearing not to threaten their cartel on the scientific discourse. The truth is that all scientific journals are dinosaurs from the age of paper. There is simply no reason why a larger version of the arxiv, with electronic peer-review (Slashdot as a model?), would not be a workable substitute for every scientific journal. If the PLOS organisers were to be true to their principles of open science, they would be pushing for an end to the journal system altogether. Physicists are far ahead of the bioscientists in this respect.