[We can] implement peer review on the Net … peer review is medium-independent … The Net can generate search and selection tools that are infinitely more powerful than letting fingers and eyes – not to mention legs – do the walking … The vast commercial use of the Net for selling trade products and services will make it trivial to give esoteric scholarship/science a free ride … The saving is 70 percent or more.
Predictor: Harnad, Stevan
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 research paper published in Managing Information, Stevan Harnad of the University of Southampton writes about the coming revolution in the publishing of scholarly research and commentary:”What holds us back [from publishing our scholarly work online instead of in the traditional manner]? Nothing but the arbitrary habits bred by the old paper technology and superstitious worries arising from them. Here is a sample, along with answers to them. I will not take to the skies because: 1. The Net is not a fit place for serious science/scholarship. (Answer: Implement peer review on the Net and it will be; peer review is medium-independent.). 2. The Net will generate so much information that it will be impossible to distinguish signal from noise. (Answer: See (1) and tag items on the Net accordingly; the Net can generate search and selection tools that are infinitely more powerful than letting fingers and eyes – not to mention legs – do the walking. If I could take only one bibliometric tool to a desert island, it would certainly be something like the powerful character string-based Unix search ‘grep’ and not an alphabetic index…). 3. The Net will eventually cost money, just as paper did – in fact, it already does, but the price is borne by government and universities. (Answer: The vast commercial use of the Net for selling trade products and services will make it trivial to give esoteric scholarship/science a free ride, it would amount to no more than the flea on the tail of the dog. And the concern is ironic, because it is scholarly institutions that are subsidizing trade use of the Net currently.) 4. The Net cannot ensure archiving in perpetuity. (Answer: Can libraries? Are distributed tapes, disks and their successors more invulnerable than distributed paper? If still uneasy, save a paper version too.) 5. The per-page costs of electronic publishing are only 20 to 30 percent less than those of paper publishing. (Answer: That’s reckoned as the percentage that electronic processing will save in paper publishing; if the sole goal is electronic, the saving is 70 percent or more.) This 70 percent savings is possible because there are no paper, printing, marketing, or distribution costs for free journals that are solely electronic. The common estimate that only 20 to 30 percent of costs will be saved in moving to electronic publication is derived from an analysis bound by the terms of the paper environment; those who focus on the costs of getting the text in paper form and then subtract what electronic processing might shave off those costs. If costs are analyzed from a truly electronic-only standpoint, only two categories of the costs associated with paper publishing remain: peer review and editing. All other costs simply vanish.”
Biography:Stevan Harnad was a professor and researcher in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. He made predictions about the future of electronic publishing, including his article “Electronic Scholarly Publication: Quo Vadis” (1995). (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)?
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: Managing Information
Title, headline, chapter name: Electronic Scholarly Publication: Quo Vadis
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.quo.vadis.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney