Cell Stem Cell [coming this summer] is a big deal because it's published by Cell Press, a highly respected family of journals often cited in the media....
What disappoints me about the new Cell Stem Cell website is that it does not contain any message boards, a feature that open access journals like Chemistry Central have included from their inception. This would allow scientists to ask the authors of a paper questions, the research community to add conclusions that the authors did not think of, and the public to react to the societal implications of the work. Chemists and biologists have lagged far behind engineers, legal scholars, and politicians in embracing blogs, wikis, and message boards. This is partially the fault of the publishers that have a stranglehold on scientific communication and little motivation to change.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/09/2007 10:17:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
