For what LIRNEasia does, scholarly publishing with slow-paced peer review and print-on-paper publishing has not been the best fit. Our 2006 work got published in a 2008 book and our 2008 survey data got published in a special issue of a journal in 2011. But the question of assessing and ensuring quality is ever present and the natural answer is peer review. With peer review, delay is part of the package. Plus it can be a conservative force. But we continue to experiment, putting our papers on SSRN and so on. This NYT article gives lots to think about.
“It’s one of the last areas on the Internet where there really isn’t anything yet that addresses core needs for this group of people,” he said, adding that “trillions” are spent each year on global scientific research. Investors are betting that a successful site catering to scientists could shave at least a sliver off that enormous pie.
Dr. Madisch, of ResearchGate, acknowledged that he might never reach many of the established scientists for whom social networking can seem like a foreign language or a waste of time. But wait, he said, until younger scientists weaned on social media and open-source collaboration start running their own labs.
“If you said years ago, ‘One day you will be on Facebook sharing all your photos and personal information with people,’ they wouldn’t believe you,” he said. “We’re just at the beginning. The change is coming.”
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