It’s difficult to believe that scientific publishers still treat their journal articles as if they’re only printed on paper, even though the larger part of their readership accesses and reads the papers online. Web technology has come so far that online publications could provide new ways of interaction between author and reader and capture the scientific discourse that occurs outside the confines of formal peer reviewed journal articles.
While the publication of a work of research in a peer reviewed journal usually marks the end of a long journey of hypotheses, generating data, interpreting results and writing up of the research, the scientific life of the paper has only just begun! It is likely the authors go to a conference to present their work. Maybe an interesting debate will spark on said conference. Maybe a blogger decides to write a blogpost on the paper. The paper will get cited, criticized and praised.
The tools to capture this ‘extended universe’ are there, but uptake has been pretty much non-existent so far. Some of the things publishers could do: let authors embed their presentation via slideshare, place the link to that video of that amazing talk the first author gave on that conference, give room for readers to ask the authors direct questions or aggregate blog posts and main stream media coverage. Such interaction and information methods are easy to implement and have the potential to place research in context in the place where it counts: the publication itself.
The Guardian can do it, why do scientific publishers lag behind?
Scientific publications could become the central hub for information and coverage regarding this particular work, accessible for scientists and the public alike. In a time where publishers are under increasing pressure to change their business models and approach to science, what do they have to lose? Why are publishers so scared to enter the exciting world of science in the digital age? Even main stream media are figuring out how to deliver ongoing, high-quality coverage of new scientific publications, as this excellent initiative of the Guardian shows.
Luckily it’s not all doom and gloom, the open access journals of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) seem to ‘get it’ by allowing direct comments, showing impact measures besides simple citation counts and aggregating blog posts about the paper. The potential for extended interaction is there, even though the commenting has not been taken up as much as I’d like to see.
As an example, I placed a comment on a PLoS ONE paper where a species name was misspelled. I mentioned this in my comment and gave the correct name, but three months later, neither author nor editor replied to this comment or undertook action. I now feel quite guilty and frustrated about the comment, because it is still there in the abstract, for all the world to see. It really would have been the best for all parties involved if a reaction had come quickly, but unfortunately we’re not quite there yet…
I hope that eventually more scientists and scientific publishers ‘get’ the potential of online publication. A paper could be so much more. A paper should be so much more.
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