Note from Jeremy: Here’s our latest guest post, from marine ecologist, blogger, and all-around savvy guy Jarrett Byrnes. Jarrett is part of an NCEAS working group on the state of scholarly publishing in ecology and evolution. Here, he describes the group’s work on this important issue and asks for your input.
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Are we satisfied with the current state of scholarly publishing in EEB? Where do you see it going in the future? As part of an NCEAS working group, we want to know what you think.
We’ve seen a lot of developments in the past 30 years that have deep ramifications for scholarly publishing. We’ve seen the dawn of the internet, and witnessed it accelerate the scientific publishing process. We’ve witnessed the rise of arXiv and seen it change publishing in math and physics. We’ve seen blogs, twitter, comment systems, and more explode in use. We’ve seen the rise of data publication, sharing of figures, sharing of code, and asked ourselves, “Just what should I list on my CV?”
The traditional scholarly publishing process has not evolved as quickly. Nor should it – it is a necessarily conservative industry, and should only be adopting best practices that enhance the quality of science.
So, how do we feel about those best practices? What do we think of what is there now? How should it grow and change to an ideal future inspired by the developments we’ve seen in communication and publishing around us?
We want to know those answers from YOU – the ecology, evolution, environmental, and earth science community. We’ll be reporting back on this information, and then using it to inform a project that we’ll be launching in the next few months. So click on this link, and tell us what you think about the current system of scholarly publishing and where you see us going in the future!
Dynamic Ecology 