Towards new models in academic publishing.

Abstract

The origin of the scientific journal lies in the need of researchers to communicate with each other. But the traditional scientific journal has been confronting the academic community with a number of problems. These are especially due to the sluggishness of the system and its high and ever increasing costs. Actually, since the start of the first journals, their emphasis has gradually shifted from communication to quality assessment. Thus the traditional journal is rather an obstacle than an instrument for efficient scientific communication. Several initiatives have been started to realise other ways of scientific publishing, using modern information technology. In several disciplines, however, a relatively large number of academics still are reluctant to make use of completely new ways of publishing. Thus a gradual transition from the present model to more innovative models is necessary. The article presents: 1. an overview of the background of these developments; 2. some examples of emerging new publishing models; 3. an example of an innovative European project, FIGARO, which aims at: - Setting up an infrastructure for supporting services for academic electronic publishing; - Building a network of academic content providers in Europe using this infrastructure.