The four pillars of scholarly publishing: The future and a foundation

, , , , , , , ,
1 Biology Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, United States
2 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
3 New Media Research Institute, New Media Studio, Inc., Santa Barbara, CA, United States
4 Public Library of Science, Cambridge, United Kingdom
5 School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, United States
6 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
7 Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada
8 Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.11v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Evolutionary Studies, Science Policy
Keywords
publishing, open access, scholarly communication, open evaluation
Copyright
© 2013 Byrnes et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Cite this article
Byrnes JEK, Baskerville E, Caron B, Neylon C, Tenopir C, Schildhauer M, Budden A, Aarssen L, Lortie CJ. 2013. The four pillars of scholarly publishing: The future and a foundation. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e11v1

Abstract

With the rise of electronic publishing and the inherent paradigm shifts for so many other scientific endeavours, it is time to consider a change in the practices of scholarly publication in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. To facilitate the speed and quality of science, the future of scholarly communication will rest on four pillars - an ecosystem of scholarly products, immediate and open access, open peer review, and full recognition for participating in the process. These four pillars enable us to build better tools to facilitate the discovery of new relevant work for individual scientists, one of the greatest challenges of our time as we cope with the current deluge of scientific information. By incorporating these principles into future publication platforms, we argue that science and society will be better served than by remaining locked into a publication formula that arose in the 1600s. It has served its purpose admirably and well, but it is time to move forward. With the rise of the Internet, scholarly publishing has embraced electronic distribution. But the tools afforded by the Internet and other advancing technologies have profound implications for scholarly communication beyond just distribution. We argue that, to best serve science, the process of scholarly communication must embrace these advances and evolve. Here we consider the current state of the process in ecology and evolutionary biology and propose directions for change. We identify four pillars for the future of scientific communication: (1) an ecosystem of scholarly products; (2) immediate and open access; (3) open peer review; and (4) full recognition for participating in the process. These four pillars will guide the development of better tools and practices for discovering and sharing scientific knowledge in a modern networked world. Things were far different when the existing system arose in the 1600s, and though it has served its purpose admirably and well, it is time to move forward.