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I presented this paper to a conference in South Africa in 2005, and it was described as "too radical" by the top leaders in libraries in South Africa who attended. :) So am rather happy that my vague perceptions and musings about the emerging trends have been vindicated today. "This paper will focus on another aspect that is integrally linked to the ability to access literature and information - that of cost and economics. Both the broader macroeconomic context and the more focused microeconomic (South African) environment will be referred to. We will examine the assumption that the economic development of a nation is linked to the ability to access information and test whether this is a valid assumption. From there, we will take a brief look at the issue of the cost of books, specifically in South Africa. The advent of the electronic revolution and the many paradigm shifts that the Internet and electronic media have initiated and the effects on the publishing industry, will be outlined. We will explore the "information as commodity" paradigm and briefly look at the related Copyright and Intellectual Property developments before weaving these seemingly disparate threads together to form a picture of innovative solutions that have arisen in response to the information access crisis in South Africa. These solutions have arisen from the popular notion that information should be freely available for societal good, rather than commodified. Finally, we will ponder the effect that these solutions may have on the traditional book publishing industry in South Africa."

Thank you all, very much, it is quite a new experience for me to have the paper well received. :)

Thank you for sharing this. I really appreciated the non-North American context. I grew up in the States, and am working on my Master's degree in Canada, so it's really easy to get caught up in always looking at these issues from the North American point of view. Seeing papers like this really help to confirm how global these issues are, and cement their importance in my mind.

A great news, especially for the "immediately" aspect! "A consortium of six leading UK medical research charities will support the costs of making research articles from their funded research immediately and freely openly available to scientists, patients, and donors alike, through the recently announced joint Charity Open Access Fund."

"Heather Joseph, Executive Directory, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, talks to the University of Maryland community about the evolution of open access and how trendlines are pointing up. Change is accelerating in the push to make information openly and freely available."

"Funded by tertiary institutions rather than individual researchers, this new model seeks to provide open access not just to traditional academic publications but to all forms of scholarly output."

A short overview on how social media influenced on scientific publishing.

"If, as rumoured, google builds a platform for depositing unrefereed research papers for "peer-reviewing" via crowd-sourcing, can this create a substitute for classical peer-review or will it merely supplement classical peer review with crowd-sourcing?"

Two facts that makes me think, peer-reviewing via crowd-sourcing, at best would supplement the traditional peer-review process. Fact one, there are already open access repositories that allow "deposit first; review later", but those repositories have not taken over other journals. Fact two, Wikipedia is an example in that, though theoretically anyone can contribute and edit the articles, there is definite number of people who would do it. Therefore, I don't see crowd sourcing peer review would really substitute the traditional route.

I appreciated that this source was framed outside of dichotomous thinking by not pitting more traditional and open access peer review models directly against one another, carrying the assumption that a particular publishing process must choose one or another. Although, I think I would challenge Harnad to take this thought process further. Rather than supplementing or complementing one another, traditional and open peer review models are distinct enough to also be applicable in different types of contexts, without necessarily needing to rely on one another. That is not to disagree with Harnad that the two do not "substitute" one another, but precisely because they cannot substitute one another indicates that they serve different purposes and could thus be useful in different contexts…. Or, as Harnad suggest, supplement each other in the same context. I think this very well parallels the context of taxonomies and folksonomies.

Se trata de un Manual en el que se presentan los aspectos que hay que tener en cuenta para escribir y publicar artículos científicos con calidad suficiente para que sean aceptados en revistas de impacto elevado. Puede resultar de gran interés para jóvenes investigadores y para todos aquellos que deseen conocer más a fondo el mundo de la publicación científica Entre otros, se tratan los siguientes temas: - Tipos de publicaciones: ponencias, posters, informes y patentes. - Publicación en revistas científicas: identificación de las revistas, criterios de calidad de las revistas tanto internacionales (factor de impacto JCR, SJR, etc.) como nacionales (INREC's, DICE, CIRC…) - Preparación del manuscrito. Recomendaciones sobre la redacción del título, la forma del nombre del autor, la elaboración del resumen, palabras clave, referencias bibliográficas, partes del artículo, redacción del texto, uso de ilustraciones, tablas, gráficos, etc. - Ética de la publicación científica para autores, editores y evaluadores. Conflictos de intereses, detección de plagio. Organismos que velan por la ética en las publicaciones. - Como seleccionar la revista a la que enviar el artículo - Publicar en acceso abierto: El open access y la calidad, editoriales OA, repositorios temáticos e institucionales - Promoción del artículo y marketing profesional. Seguimiento del impacto.