There must be a virtue to an on-line journal
beyond the speed, ease and convenience of
shuttling the raw data among reviewers,
authors and editors. To constrict this new
potential into the rut already carved by an older
medium (i.e. print) seems an ostrich-like
way to proceed.
So shouldn't we be spending a good deal of
our time in this discussion wondering how
to unleash the potential for academic discourse
provided by this new medium rather than worrying
over how to make it legitimage by squeezing it
into the old boxes?
For instance: what is the power provided not by
a totally closed subscription model but by a gateway
or access-provider model? What about a semi-permeable
membrane model, which gives the reader-user access, in
part, to dialogues with authors and editors through
the on-line text? What about a journal that included hyperlinks
to other resources, sites, databases, archives, people?
What about a journal that was partly "graffitable"
(as my grad students have been calling it)
so that readers could in limited fashion "write over"
or "on" the e-space provided by the journal,
leaving traces of their travel through the site?
I think it is tragic if PMC, which has already
established its credentials in the old, fussy
legitimate print fashion (to a certain degree) now turns
backward rather than forward. It would be like
including banisters in elevators. Indeed, embracing
some of the new electronic forms invited by the
medium might help PMC define what is distinct about
it not only in terms of how its delivered, but in
some fundamental epistemological terms.
David Porush
http://www.rpi.edu/~porusd
(518) 276-8262
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"Nature was finished when it invented the human brain."
Porush's Law
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