Who pays the Ferryman? About new models for scientific communication

Abstract

Due to a number of problems the traditional scientific journal no longer fulfils a role in the communication among scientists. Several initiatives have been started, using modern information technology, to realise other ways of scientific publishing, which are more in tune with the demands of the academic community.

Two Dutch universities (Utrecht and Delft) and two German universities (Oldenburg and Hamburg) have taken the initiative to set up an infrastructure for academic e-publishing in Europe and to establish a network of content providers making use of this infrastructure. This project, called FIGARO, is a European extension of the Dutch Roquade project together with the German GAP project and is financially supported by the European Commission.

The FIGARO project has a number of remarkable aspects. Firstly, it offers a variety of possibilities, which together constitute an expeditious way for gradually changing the publication behaviour of scientists. It aims at creating an infrastructure that conglomerates the swiftness of publication, which hitherto could only be realised by grey publishing, with quality judgement but without the serious delay of the traditional review procedures. FIGARO offers a wide number of facilities to a broad audience, based on a common organisational and technical infrastructure. Secondly, it creates a business model, which distinguishes between service providers (especially for the e-publishing infrastructure) at one side and a network of front offices (content providers and intermediates for content providers) at the other side. This business model not only guarantees continuous feed back from the users, but it also allows content providers to stick to their own brand and brand name, instead of urging them to conform to a publisher's brand. In short, FIGARO is not a publisher in the traditional sense, but it enables scientists and organisations of scientists to become publishers themselves.