The one exception being the Journal of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, at BBS, which follows a model of open review commentary and publishes reviews, the author's answer to the review and third-party peer commentaries alongside the original paper. The journal goes as far as to publish papers which question the peer review system such as the famous D.P. Peters and S. J. Ceci 1982 paper titled "Peer-review practices of psychological journals: the fate of published articles, submitted again." The paper shows how resubmitting papers that had already been published, under false names and institutions, resulted in almost all cases in the paper being rejected. The explanation being, that the academic status of the author and host institution greatly affects the reviewers bias. That BBS published such a paper (an many other similar ones having been published there and elsewhere) is at least a glimpse of hope.
This school is taking a very tainted and dangerous direction in my opinion.
First, paper books standing in shelves provide the opportunity to find the unexpected: when looking up a book, you come up with another, or many others, even on passing alleys. In this way I have read many research work with which I would have never come across otherwise, and which contributed both to my general understanding of science and to solve my particular problem at the moment, besides satisfying my curiosity. This phenomenum occurs also when looking up a word in a dictionary, and does not happen when doing so in m-w.com
Second, paper books cannot and will not ever be substituted by laptops with internet access before all this technological milestones are reached: infinite bateries, extreme ressistance (spilled coffee, stepping onto it, using it as door stop or to step on it to reach a book at the top shelf), and the degree of comfortability associated with books such as bending it and holding it with one hand without problems.
Besides, internet contents is manipulated to such an extent that one cannot trust a website will have the same text every other day. What is one supposed to do, cache 90,000 books? And even worse: when information access can be regulated, it usually is, meaning users will be directed to the "officially approved" books and versions of texts, meaning, most of the library contents won't ever be used or even, there won't be a real chance to reach it unless one clicks in deliberately obscured links. All the above leading to all students learning the standard theory corpus and nothing else, which is quite against the exercise of curiosity demanded on a scientist.
Slashdot Mirror
The one exception being the Journal of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, at BBS, which follows a model of open review commentary and publishes reviews, the author's answer to the review and third-party peer commentaries alongside the original paper. The journal goes as far as to publish papers which question the peer review system such as the famous D.P. Peters and S. J. Ceci 1982 paper titled "Peer-review practices of psychological journals: the fate of published articles, submitted again." The paper shows how resubmitting papers that had already been published, under false names and institutions, resulted in almost all cases in the paper being rejected. The explanation being, that the academic status of the author and host institution greatly affects the reviewers bias. That BBS published such a paper (an many other similar ones having been published there and elsewhere) is at least a glimpse of hope.
First, paper books standing in shelves provide the opportunity to find the unexpected: when looking up a book, you come up with another, or many others, even on passing alleys. In this way I have read many research work with which I would have never come across otherwise, and which contributed both to my general understanding of science and to solve my particular problem at the moment, besides satisfying my curiosity. This phenomenum occurs also when looking up a word in a dictionary, and does not happen when doing so in m-w.com
Second, paper books cannot and will not ever be substituted by laptops with internet access before all this technological milestones are reached: infinite bateries, extreme ressistance (spilled coffee, stepping onto it, using it as door stop or to step on it to reach a book at the top shelf), and the degree of comfortability associated with books such as bending it and holding it with one hand without problems.
Besides, internet contents is manipulated to such an extent that one cannot trust a website will have the same text every other day. What is one supposed to do, cache 90,000 books? And even worse: when information access can be regulated, it usually is, meaning users will be directed to the "officially approved" books and versions of texts, meaning, most of the library contents won't ever be used or even, there won't be a real chance to reach it unless one clicks in deliberately obscured links. All the above leading to all students learning the standard theory corpus and nothing else, which is quite against the exercise of curiosity demanded on a scientist.